I Love Thee Better Than Thou Canst Devise
by Montague Disciple
Summary: Act Three, Scene One from Benvolio's POV - Benvolio/Mercutio slash. PLEASE R&R!
1. Chapter One: Here Come The Capulets

Perhaps the burning heat had addled my brains; I thought at first it must be so, for I was surely hallucinating. I knew that the figure beside me – who seemed like a god in my eyes – was no more an immortal than I was a Capulet. Was it just a cruel trick of the blinding sunlight that sparkled in his black eyes and polished them a devastating onyx, and that seemed to transform his quick grin into a dazzling, dizzying smile? I knew full well that he was no more nor less – never less, for we barely ever fought – than my best friend, Mercutio, but in the drought of July I became aware of something deeper. While my kinsman Romeo busied himself with his pursuit of the unfortunate maid that had become the subject of his latest fickle affections, I preferred simply to sit and listen to Mercutio's chatter. My boyhood companions had grown up and become young men – as had I – and many were newly married, yet the very idea of marriage repulsed me. And had my father not chided me of late for my closeness to Mercutio?

…

I had been sitting on a bench underneath one of the trees in the orchard, Mercutio leaning against the garden wall and chattering away. Although a book had been open on my lap I neglected even the pretence of reading it – I was too engrossed in what my friend was saying (and unaware that this was anything beyond the ordinary. At that point, I naïvely assumed everyone was as fascinated by Mercutio as I was.) It was not until my father spoke that I realised he and my mother had been there all the time, standing quietly by a trellis and watching us.

"Mercutio, thy father desires a word with thee," my father had said, and Mercutio nodded once – they shared a glance which I thought nothing of at the time. Then he slipped away, stealthy and silent as a jaguar.

My father had turned to me then.

"'Tis most unnatural for a youth," he had scolded, observing how my time was spent chiefly with Mercutio and – if he could bear to be apart from the lady he was chasing at the time – Romeo. "Wilt thou not find some pretty maid of whom to make a happy bride?" Then my aunt – who had clung to the arm of my uncle while he spoke – had regarded me with serious eyes that seemed to bore into my soul, searching for something that could not be found and that (so few days ago!) I did not understand.

I understood now, painfully so. The thought had come to me – borne on the wave of heat that stifled Verona – as I sat in the sunlight watching him two days ago. Since then, it had festered in my brain like a fever waiting to strike.

…

Being so near to Mercutio as now was both agonising and wonderful in seemingly impossible measure. But mostly, as we walked side by side – I was all too aware of the tiny space between us, the minimal and yet Herculean effort it would take to reach out and touch his hand – my stubborn heart concentrated on the pain.

The heat of the day was upon us, its oppressive atmosphere prompting in me a foreboding that warned the Capulets were near – and in these temperatures they would be as hot for a fight as any. If we met any of that house, a quarrel (the likes of which had been lately banned by Prince Escalus) would surely follow.

To my annoyance, I could not keep the tremor from my voice as I conveyed all this to Mercutio. In my awe, I was as a newly born lamb over my tone and the things which my face betrayed to the world. I sounded both a fool and a coward, I knew.

My odd behaviour had not gone unnoticed by Mercutio. He laughed and told me how he had noted that I would often, upon entering a tavern, lay my sword on the table as if to abandon it, but after two cups of ale I would be fighting with another youth for little reason.

"Am I such a fellow?" I asked in surprise. Secretly, I thought Mercutio himself better befitted that description, but who was I to argue with this kinsman of the Prince and my very friend? (I wished that he could be more than that, but I knew it was not to be.) I loathed myself then for doubting his opinion.

"Come, come, thou art as hot a Jack as any in Italy; and as soon moved to be moody, and as soon moody to be moved."

He was off again, his clever mind forming pun after pun to fire at my inferior wit. Mine was no match for his sense of humour, but I played along and let him talk, rejoicing in the silver sound of his voice. It was like music, the most beautiful music that I had ever heard, the music of angels playing on golden harps…The words lost all meaning before long, but my ears drank them gladly. I spoke as little as I could, for I hated to interrupt the merry stream of words that flowed so naturally from lips too rosy and flawless for my eyes to turn away.

Distraction enough presented itself in good time. A shadow fell across the ground before our feet, and I froze in dread as I recognised the blond figure storming towards us, followed by a trio of mean-looking youths. My mouth and throat dried up. "By my head," I croaked out shakily, "here come the Capulets."

Mercutio's eyes sparkled, no figment of my imagination this time but a fervour of barely concealed excitement. He grinned wickedly, instilling a deeper dread within me. Thiswas as I had feared. "By my heel, I care not." And before I could stop him, he strode towards the approaching Tybalt.


	2. Chapter Two: All Eyes Gaze On Us

I was a sight shorter than Mercutio – indeed, he was of a fine stature, though there was no time for admiring it now – and I had to hurry to keep pace with him, hissing frantic reasoning in his ear as I did so. But he simply waved me aside, the casual dismissal wounding me deeply.

Tybalt turned and muttered something in a tone too low to catch – a command of some sort, I assumed – to his Capulet thugs. They all nodded and fell in to flank him, one taking his left side and the other two one his right. Apart from Tybalt – who was tall, fair, and almost leonine in build and athletic grace – the rest were all thickset youths, with suntanned skin, dark oily hair and beetle-browed faces. I did not so much mind the way that their tiny, greedy brown eyes glared at me, but I hated that they did the same to Mercutio. What had he done to deserve the threats that their silent presence emanated? He was neither Capulet nor Montague, so why did they have to drag him into the hated quarrel with this obvious intimidation?

Mercutio, however, was oblivious to my anxiety. He seemed to radiate impatience – eagerness for action, I guessed, for I knew those burning eyes and the way he had tensed as a tiger might before springing – not unlike the way in which our enemies exuded their nearly tangible waves of hatred. His half-crazed grin widened as Tybalt began to speak.

The Capulet's tone was full of poison. "Gentlemen, good den." In his cat-green eyes we were no better than dust, and he wished us anything but a good afternoon – that much was clear from his mocking leer. "A word with one of you."

I was frantically casting my mind back to see what offence Tybalt could be holding against me – for I never even thought Mercutio might me responsible for his anger (blame Mercutio? Never!) – when my friend spoke, and my heart sank a little lower than where it already skulked heavily in my chest.

"And but a word with one of us? Couple it with something; make it a word and a blow."

'_No, Mercutio, please!' _I mutely begged him, as Tybalt frowned back at us. "You will find me apt enough to that, _sir_"– this sarcastic as his derisive greeting had been – "an you will give me occasion."

The thinly veiled warning only fuelled Mercutio's delight. I stood speechless in horror as he teased Tybalt, "Could you not take some occasion without giving?" His taunt was akin to dangling a rat just beyond reach of a volatile tomcat – both were asking for trouble, and was sure that in time Mercutio's question would result in the same injury.

Tybalt obligingly began, "Mercutio, thou consort'st with Romeo –" but Mercutio, incensed so suddenly and violently that he scared me, cut him off.

His rage was spectacular. Black eyes no longer twinkling but flashing, fists clenched so tight that I feared his knuckled would break through his skin, and body quivering like an arrow fresh from flight, he roared, "CONSORT? _WHAT_? Dost thou make us _minstrels_?" Had I not been terrified for his life – for Tybalt's fingers twitched dangerously close to his sheathed sword then – I might have chuckled at the jest; but he continued, "An thou make _minstrels_ of us, look to hear nothing but DISCORDS! _Here's_ my fiddlestick, _here's _that shall make you DANCE! 'Zounds –_consort!_ " Then I saw that his hand had gone to his belt, and was caressing the hilt of his rapier.

I wanted so much to take that hand, that hand with its smooth skin and elongated fingers, and lead him to safety; to put both arms around him, protect him from Tybalt's fire. But I knew how he would react if I so much as laid a restraining hand on his shoulder, and I could not bear to anger him. Besides, I thought…knew…believed, _had to believe_ that he could take care of himself when it came to fighting; he was more man than I was.

I took advantage of the lull that came in the wake of Mercutio's rage to remind them hastily of Prince Escalus' decree that rioting in the streets was forbidden, and punishable by death. (The very possibility that Mercutio could die – worse, could be executed in shame – was too much pain for my mind to hold at once, so I thought no more of it.) "We talk here in the public haunt of men," I began nervously, gesturing vaguely to a group drifting towards us. "Either withdraw unto some private place, or reason coldly of your grievances," – for Tybalt had still not told us of the reason for this unfortunate meeting – "or else depart; here all eyes gaze on us." In particular, the eyes of the cluster of approaching youths seemed trained intently on our ill-met gathering. I wondered hazily whether I knew any of them, or if Mercutio did, or if they were more Capulets come to stir up trouble.

To my dismay, my speech did not deter either Mercutio or Tybalt for a minute; it only served to amuse Mercutio, who seemed surprised that his strange quiet companion had said so much at once. He drew himself up to his full height – and he was so much taller than me that I felt like a child in a world it does not understand – put his hands on his hips (my heart dropped still lower when I saw how his long, elegant fingers still curved about the sword hilt) and declared proudly, "Men's eyes were made to look, and let them gaze. I will not budge for no man's pleasure, I."

The motley band of youths who had been walking our way stopped as they sensed trouble in the air. It was with relief that I realised the onlookers to our unborn quarrel were not of the house of Capulet as I had feared – I recognised among them young Valentine, Mercutio's brother. My hopes rose; perchance the boy could help me prevent the wayward brother whom I loved so dearly from talking himself into danger.

Another member of the group – who had previously been hidden behind a broad, dark-haired young man – detached himself from the throng and moved towards us. Romeo, his countenance painted into a picture of bliss that had long been foreign to those gloomy features. I was glad to see my cousin well, and curious as to how his fortunes had changed so dramatically.

Unexpectedly, Tybalt's ferocity towards us seemed to lessen, and he turned away from Mercutio. (I realised then how close they had been standing – almost nose- to nose, although not eye-to-eye on account of Mercutio's imposing height – and was intensely thankful when the gap between them widened. Though he was taller, Mercutio's throat had not been out of the reach of Tybalt's murderous hands…) "Well, peace be with you, sir. Here comes my man now."

I wondered for a moment what he could mean when he spoke thus of Romeo; then, in the next instant, I had it. The challenge.

…

"Where the devil should this Romeo be?" Mercutio had exclaimed, as we waited for him in the lane by his father's house. Secretly – oh, anything I felt for Mercutio, or any emotion experienced in his company, was done so secretly! – I willed Romeo never to turn up, so I could just stay there forever and listen to Mercutio mildly cursing my cousin, our mutual friend. The hand gesture that accompanied that first sentence, his posture as he leant against the wall…all were treasures that I hoarded in my memory, to savour later when I was alone. His next words had been safely stowed away, too: "Came he not home tonight?"

I had been the one cursing then, though only in my head. A question required me to speak, which was nigh impossible with Mercutio listening to my weak and feeble voice. I answered quickly, "Nay, not to his father's. I spoke with his man."

We had, I think, both assumed that when Romeo ventured into Capulet's orchard, it was to serenade Rosaline (who lived under his roof) or perchance, given the extreme hazardous nature of such a task as that, merely to stand beneath her window and gaze up at it, as if wishing himself through the forbidding glass. (The night before, I had done much the same – stood under Mercutio's window and longed for his face to appear there. I knew the disappointment of a night spent in such a manner, in weather that seemed too cold for the season of summer.) Mercutio had sighed melodramatically – a sound that sent thrills though my veins – and moaned, "That same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline, torments him so, he will sure run mad!" It was an excellent impersonation of my overly theatrical cousin, and we had both laughed. To share laughter like that seemed a rare occurrence of late.

To distract my mind from the notion that, given the chance, I might act much the same for my own frustrated love, I had then mentioned – yes, I had spoken unbidden – the letter that Romeo's man Balthasar had been bearing to Lord Montague's abode. It was, I had told Mercutio, from Tybalt.

"A challenge, on my life!" Mercutio had cried.

"Romeo will answer it." Of this I had been sure; but of the outcome of such a duel, less so.

Mercutio, too, had voiced my fears – "Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead; _stabbed _with a white wench's black eye; _shot _through the ear with a love song; the very pin of his heart _cleft_…" Each accented word caused me to jump, which had clearly been Mercutio's intention; he grinned devilishly each time I started in surprise. "And is he a man to encounter Tybalt?" He answered his own question with a sad shake of his head, an action which caused his glossy black hair to briefly frame his pale face like the twisted halo of a fallen angel – although in my eyes, of course, he was not and would never be one of the Fallen. Not in that sense.

…

Perhaps then I was not sure of the outcome of such a duel; Tybalt, who fought by the book, against Romeo grieving for a love denied. But now – having seen him so happy - I was confident that my cousin could match that mouser, and a weight was lifted from my shoulders. Mercutio's life, for now at least, was out of danger, and Romeo's too; the latter was not so hot-blooded as the one who caused _my _blood to warm to my cheeks, and would duel in a gentlemanly manner. I relaxed for a second.

My brief moment of belief that all would be well was shattered by a jibe from Mercutio. "But I'll be hang'd, _sir,_" he cried, returning Tybalt's feigned courtesy, "If he wear your livery."

What he said was perfectly true (although even if he claimed to be an emperor I would believe him readily) – Romeo certainly was no Capulet servant – but it would surely provoke Tybalt further. I was ready to drag Mercutio away – and hang the consequence, if it meant that he escaped injury! – when the blond Capulet astonished me by ignoring Mercutio and speaking instead to my cousin.

The last few words of his seething address were the only ones that mattered. "Thou art a villain," he growled, green eyes glowering.

Mercutio and I turned expectantly to Romeo – the blatant insult would not go unpunished, especially not in the face of Tybalt's formal challenge. But Romeo only smiled, a sight that shocked me more than the sudden appearance of the Capulet party had. Up close I recognised the dreamy expression clouding his brown eyes and his better judgement, and I thought bitterly of my own love. Compared to Mercutio, Rosaline would be so easily won as to make her devotion worthless; compared to Mercutio, Rosaline herself was but a beggarmaid, an urchin, a streetling…I felt myself sink into the mire of anguish that surrounded my thoughts when jealousy and love for Mercutio combined as they did so often now.

What shocked me out of my painful daydream was the friendly tone in which Romeo answered Tybalt. "The reason I have to love thee doth much excuse the appertaining rage at such a greeting." He continued in the same vein, but my ears were deaf to his bizarre words. What the devil had got into him? Tybalt, a Capulet, had plainly insulted him – challenged him in writing no less – and he so willingly surrendered his honour and that of his house? I did not want a brawl, but this, _this _was almost worse. Our thoughts briefly united for one glorious moment, Mercutio and I exchanged horrified glances as Romeo finished, "Farewell; I see thou know'st me not." He turned to leave, raising his hand in a parting gesture to us as he did so.

I knew that Tybalt was never one to let things lie, and there he did not prove me wrong. Romeo's calm dismissal – which clearly riled him – did not, he said, "excuse the injuries thou hast done me. Therefore," he demanded, "turn and draw!"

Romeo's answer to the order was just as peaceable as before. He protested (although perhaps that is not the right word, for he exerted no more force than a suckling kitten might as it pushed its sibling aside) against the charge that he had done Tybalt some injury, then proclaimed that he loved Tybalt, "better than thou canst devise, till thou shalt know the meaning of my love." I stared blankly at him, uncomprehending, waiting for him to laugh and say that his words were all in jest. But no such action was forthcoming. Mercutio, beside me, was clearly irate – out of the corner of my eye I could see him trembling with the effort of controlling his rage. I found it easier to let myself feel the same way than to excuse Romeo's increasingly foolish actions. Finally, Romeo's attempt to placate Tybalt with the words, "Good Capulet, which name I tender as dearly as mine own, be satisfied," seemed to slot everything into place. So Rosaline had broken her vows ere she had taken them, then, and instead given them as vows of love to Romeo? My cousin, finally, had found love. '_And God send the fool good fortune there,' _I thought, knowing that now – as I beheld my cousin's expression of rapture whilst I stood but inches away from the love I would never have returned – my eyes were more green than those of Tybalt, that Prince of Cats, '_but someone must defend the honour of the House of Montague, that which its heir squanders so readily.' _How to end this without either bloodshed or dishonour, though? I did not wish to tempt a quarrel from the hands of a Capulet…

But that seemed Mercutio's very intention. I could see that the strain of controlling his outrage was about to overwhelm him – sure enough, the dam burst and he thundered in a voice that reverberated around the square, "O _calm, dishonourable, VILE _submission!" The metallic slither of slowly unsheathing steel masked his next remark – which, from the look he gave Tybalt, was a dig at the Capulet – then he raised his voice further so that we might all hear his challenge. "TYBALT, YOU _RAT-CATHCHER_, WILL YOU WALK?"

I hung back terrified, breath bated and heart hammering frantically at my ribs – but Tybalt, in any case, seemed puzzled. "What wouldst _thou_ have of me?" he sneered. I resented the implication that Mercutio was somehow inferior to my cousin, and bristled; I knew who was dearer to me. Romeo had always been my close friend (our familial bond, which caused us to bicker as children often do who spend too much time in each other's company, was not to our advantage and I was strangely never closer to him than I was to Mercutio) but our friendship had always survived on trust and honesty. How could I confide in him this, my only secret that mattered any more, and yet how could I keep it from him? How was I to defend his odd behaviour? Thus I recognised with a pang the death knell of my childhood ties to Romeo; my overburdened heart could no longer contain any love for him, such was my all-consuming passion for Mercutio.

As I wrested with dying boyhood friendships, Mercutio and Tybalt had continued to bandy words that I, preoccupied, had overlooked. Now I heard Tybalt answer Mercutio's initial challenge. "I am for you." He smirked as he drew his sword.

Mercutio's eyes glinted. "Come, _sir _– your _passado_." And then, the sound that I will never forget, that clash of foils meeting…


	3. Chapter Three: A Scratch, A Scratch

An instant, frozen in time. The Capulet and the Prince's kinsman, my enemy and my love, framed in a tableau of crossed swords while the rest of us could but look on in shock and awe and fear. Then the next moments were a blur of sudden reaction as we responded one by one.

I caught sight of Valentine again as the rest of his companions jostled for a better view of the duelling figures. (How could they treat this as a merry sport? I raged silently at them then – and yet still, in my fear, I hesitated.) Stripped of his years by the abject terror that reflected from his black eyes into mine, he was naught but a child whose fraternal affection for Mercutio matched my overwhelming love – he started forwards, Mercutio's name on his lips, only to be held back by two older boys. One of them covered his mouth with a huge hand – his mewling would be an embarrassment to them. They laughed as the boy struggled in their strong arms. Mercutio would solve his own problems without the help of his little brother, they said, and stood back to watch the fight.

The next to move was Romeo, who launched himself into the fray with a desperate cry. "Draw, Benvolio! Beat down their weapons!"

The curtain of thought that I had built in my mind was so thick that I heard the name, and I heard the order, as if through another's ears. And then it hit me with startling clarity: it was _my _name, and Romeo was calling me to help him break up the fight. But I couldn't obey – to leap between those two as Romeo had done would be death. Not that I would mind that so much, if it took away the pain, but it would be a futile effort – Tybalt would simply cut me down and resume his battle with Mercutio.

So I watched myself through another's eyes – perhaps the fear–widened eyes of Valentine – do nothing. Nay, not quite nothing. What I saw was the way in which my fingers grasped Mercutio's shoulder as if to pull him towards me…the outrage in his beautiful black eyes as I drew him away from his quarry, the confusion in his brother's identical features…and the light that winked off Tybalt's rapier as it slid soundlessly into my friend's flesh.

I would say afterwards that Romeo was to blame; he hindered Mercutio by forcing his way between the swords and distracting him. I would curse my cousin a thousand times over for this. And I would get away with this, for the most part. For who else had seen what I had seen? They had all been caught up in their bloodlust and senseless excitement to notice how it had been _I _that made possible Tybalt's victory – and in truth my mind, awash with the poisons of love and guilt and anger, began to reject this version of events. Lethargic with heat, shock, and the inability to grasp the strangeness of the situation, I let myself believe it had all been the fault of my once-kinsman Romeo.

Valentine's horror-struck face swam into focus as my mind became clearer. I saw the beginnings of tears brimming in the younger boy's eyes (and how Mercutio seemed to stare back at me from those two black pools of despair); he opened his mouth to cry out the name that Fortune had cruelly inscribed on my heart with her bloodied fingernails. Before those four syllables were out, a hand was back over his mouth, and the two youths whose hand still restrained him were already bundling him away. The rest of the young men – early laughter dead in their throats – followed quickly, not wishing to be seen having any part in that sorry business. The last I saw of Valentine was the beseeching expression in those haunting eyes – eyes that had, at too tender an age, seen something no sibling should have to – and the desperate hand that reached out helplessly for his brother as he was borne away.

Tybalt looked down.

The virid feline slits of his burning eyes took in the scene around them with evident pleasure. Mercutio was a mouse lying prone before him, within easy reach of his paws; Romeo stood frozen in shock, oblivious to the predator's sword; and I knelt in the dust by my fallen love, rapier sheathed and myself in no position to draw on the Capulet. (At that moment I had no recollection of having knelt, or rather no precise memory of a time when I had not been here, in this position, supporting Mercutio's weak form with my hands. I was needed, and that was all that mattered then – everything else, such as the wildcat leaning over me with a cruel grin on his face, had faded into the background.) We were at his mercy – but cats are well known for their brutal habit of prolonging their victims' suffering. Perhaps he would do just that and allow us to think that we had escaped, then return to make us prey as he had Mercutio. My soul was too leaden with grief for this to trouble me. I no longer cared how harshly Tybalt dealt with me, not after this.

A piercing whistle summoned me back to reality in time to see the King of Cats beckon to his subjects and, with a final leer in our direction, disappear down an alley.


	4. Chapter Four: Art Thou Hurt?

"I am hurt…" Mercutio's voice was hesitant, almost as if he did not believe his own injury. Perchance it was not that serious after all! But then, as Mercutio's hand went slowly to the place where Tybalt's rapier had pierced his chest, I saw the pain that filled his face as his fingers touched the raw wound. '_Tybalt, thou shalt pay a heavy price for this crime!'_ I thought, feeling rage begin to swell in my own chest.

Mercutio, too, was irate when he realised the extent of the damage. "A PLAGUE o' _both_ your houses!" he roared. Frightened by the sudden shout, I released my protective hold on him; he collapsed forwards helplessly, but retained enough strength to push my arm away when I attempted to steady him. When he spoke again, his despairing tone ripped through the fibre of my being. "I am sped…is he gone, and hath…nothing?"

His rapier lay abandoned in the dirt, too clean and bright to bear looking at. There was an uncomfortable silence as Romeo and I avoided his eyes, and I Romeo's. To break it, I ventured, "What! Art thou hurt?" Unnecessary, I knew – but then again, perhaps Romeo had not fully grasped the situation, he was such a loveblind fool. Or perchance it was Mercutio who was the fool – the jester – and this was another of his clever tricks, to shame Tybalt and to make us seem fools too.

Mercutio nodded, his eyes trained on me. I scrutinised their dark depths for a hint of his usual spark – but I found nothing there, only agony that was surely genuine. "Ay, ay, a scratch – marry, 'tis enough." It could not be a mere scratch if Mercutio was so easily abandoning hope; I crouched lower till I was level with Mercutio and the wound was in plain sight. It was a long, deep gash, staining the front of his white shirt and his fingers with scarlet. I inhaled sharply, and felt tears spring to my eyes – but I could not allow myself to cry in front of Romeo, whom I hated, or perhaps Mercutio, for whom my love was infinite. I could not be quite sure whose presence made me brush the tears away like irksome flies.

But then Mercutio asked irritably, "Where is my page?" and a fragment of his old spirit, one ember amongst the dying coals, glowed brightly again. This was the Mercutio I knew – perchance everything would be alright!

The boy he had called for stepped timidly out of the narrow sidestreet where he had hidden himself during the fight. He was clearly terrified - expecting some terrible punishment for not helping his master? Then his fear was in vain; I knew Mercutio had no appetite for sadism. It must be that Mercutio needed the lad to carry out some duty.

I suspected correctly. "Go, villain…fetch a surgeon," Mercutio commanded – his authority holding even in the face of his injury and the fact that he was curled in the dust – and with that, his white-faced pageboy hurried gratefully away.

Mercutio's own face was quickly losing colour as he lost blood from the slash Tybalt had carved in his chest; any surgeon would have to be a miracle-worker to reach us in time. I had never believed in miracles, but I had to now.

A long look from Mercutio quelled that hope. I could see that Mercutio did not expect the page to return; he simply wanted the boy out of the way, not wishing his servant to witness his death.

From where he was standing, Romeo could not see how badly his friend was wounded; even allowing for that his address to Mercutio was callous in my ears. "Courage, man, the hurt cannot be much." I almost lashed out at him - unfeeling churl, obsessed with his rigid notions of masculinity and total disregard for emotion – then and there, but I forced myself to stay calm and focus on what mattered to me and should matter to him: Mercutio.

The figure between us didn't miss the opportunity to voice a jest that had probably been waiting on his tongue since Tybalt struck him; I admired him even more for that ability to make light of his own misfortune. He half-smiled – I think pain prevented his usual grin – and answered Romeo, although he was facing me. "No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor as wide as a church door, but 'tis enough, 'twill serve: ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a _grave_ man."

'_Mercutio, please, talk not so of death!" _I cried inwardly, as he continued, in the same morbid vein, to make his reply to Romeo's insensitive remark. _'While thy heart beats – and my heart after thine – there is still hope living."_ Ah, thoughts, those liars of the mind and the refuge of wise men with some question of life to ponder. I was no wise man; my thoughts were but falsehoods and provided little comfort as I contemplated a different question of life – the impending presence of death overhanging Mercutio.

With the failing reserves of his strength, he swore vehemently again, "A plague…o' _BOTH _your houses! 'ZOUNDS…" His curse trailed off into incoherent mutterings as he began to weaken; I dared not try to comfort him, for fear that he would waste precious breath rebuking me.

It seemed that he had not finished venting his anger, however. Craning round in an effort to make eye contact with Romeo – who did not make things any easier by moving slightly away, perturbed by the ferocity in Mercutio's eyes – he raged at him, "Why the DEVIL…came you…_between _us? I was hurt…under…_your_ arm…" His laboured breathing was almost as painful to my ears as to his chest.

Romeo hung his head. (There was a small satisfaction to be had from seeing him in that shame, but pleasure had no place among my jumbled emotions right now – not unless it came from the return of the surgeon Mercutio's page had promised to fetch.) His words were hesitant, hopeless. "I…I thought all for the best…" Perchance it was a tear, then, off which the sunlight in his dull brown eyes suddenly glinted – but weep all he wished, he would not find compassion in my slowly congealing heart, nor could he with useless lamentations heal Mercutio.

Without warning, my fallen friend turned his eyes to me, and haltingly (reluctantly, too) ordered, "Help me…into some house…Benvolio…or I…shall faint…A…_plague _o' _both_…your houses! They have…made worms' meat…of me…" Clearly exhausted by the effort of exerting enough ire to seal the curse, he lapsed into a troubled silence, eyes still fixed warily on mine – I attempted to keep my love from burning in them like two bright suns, but imagine that I failed.

I reached out a hand to Mercutio, who weakly raised an arm in response. His fingers scrabbled ineffectually at air inches from my grasp before falling powerless to his side. He would need more than his own dwindling strength to stand now. I could see by the way his black eyes hardened angrily that he was disgusted at his own weakness, his reliance on me to help him upright. It was clear that he would rather crawl in agony to the nearest place of refuge – the stables, across the square from where we were gathered – than depend on anyone for support. The command – or was it a request? – he had just given me had obviously cost him more than breath. For he was Mercutio, he was the Prince's kinsman; it was in his nature and I hated to abuse his regal dignity so. But then again, to leave him dying on this hot stone floor or to watch Mercutio drag himself to shelter in a trail of his own blood would not be to do his dignity any great favours either. And besides, I could not refuse his appeal for help, however unwillingly it had been voiced – there was something about his presence that even older boys seemed to respect. Perhaps, if this nightmare were to end favourably, then he would live to become ruler of Verona (fitting, for indeed he bore himself like a future prince might) and we would look back on this and laugh. But my doubt was great…this would never be a laughing matter.

As tenderly as was possible, I eased him to his feet, my hand under his shoulders. He swayed even with this support and I began to fear that he _would_ faint – or worse fall dead – ere I could get him to safety. His weight was not much, for he was fairly slender, but even so I noticed how much he had to lean on my shoulder as we walked forwards little by little.

Every slow, shuffling step was torture as I listened to the ragged breathing of my friend and watched his shirt front stain crimson with the grievous wound. It amazed me how Mercutio still managed to hold his head high, defying anyone to pity or scorn him.

I knew that I must not look back – for if I did, I knew that my eyes would lock with Romeo's and his resentment at being solely blamed for the tragedy would awaken in me memories better left dormant. If I looked back then the guilt would so cripple me that I would be forced to strand Mercutio in this blazing square and do some violence to myself with my hitherto unstained dagger – the dagger which by rights should be soaked in Capulet blood – just to free my mind of the torment.

When inevitably I did look back, it was not to the sight that I expected. Romeo knelt on the ground, sword abandoned useless beside Mercutio's, and I could tell from his heaving shoulders that he was weeping. Just as the sight was about to stir long-dead pity for my once-cousin, he lifted his eyes to the sky and cried, "Juliet!..."

That hateful villain, that rogue, that _cur!_ While the blood of his close companion and my very love fell from a hurt that he, Romeo, had caused, he lamented for shallow love!

And so, of course, did I.

I had been so caught up in my loving and loathing that I had not realised how Mercutio's footsteps were growing ever lighter, and his weight pressed into my shoulder and neck. He would slip to the ground if I did not hold him, so little was his strength now.

So I hooked my arm under the back of his knees and lifted him. He did not protest – I think he sensed that he had precious little breath to waste – as I carried him like an infant across the harsh cobbles.


	5. Chapter Five: He Was Mercutio's Friend

**A/N: Some parts of this chapter may seem homophobic. I don't support this prejudice; I am just trying to reflect the attitude of the times.**

My pace, as I hastened towards the stable with my friend in my arms, felt unbearably slow – I would have hurried but for fear of causing him pain. There was naught in my power to do except concentrate on keeping him alive and my feet moving steadily, one in front of the other, over and over, towards the safety of seeming leagues away. The only part of the world in existence at that time was that particular strip of cobbles along which my pumps trod with far too little speed, the heat scorching through the thin soles each time my foot hit a rough stone. Mercutio's weak breath trembled against my throat like an autumn butterfly – a beauty living on borrowed time, as Mercutio himself was. "Do not yet leave this world, I beg thy soul!" I whispered to him whenever his breathing faltered. After one such interlude in the somewhat sinister music – for his life drew ever closer to its finale – I glanced down at him as I murmured those pleading words.

His face was ashen. There was only a faint glow where once a spark had illuminated his black eyes. Death's prelude had never been written so clearly on a person.

When I could no longer bear the pain of staring into his dimming eyes, I looked up towards my goal, the place to which my feet seemed to drag ever more sluggishly as sorrow weighed me down. I almost cried out in despair, for – although we had been moving for some minutes – the stable was too far away, an unreachable haven, an unattainable Elysium. It was obvious that we could not reach it in time, and that Mercutio would have to endure the agony of the unforgiving sun burning down on him as he slipped away. I sank to my knees, careful not to let go of the limp form that I clung to. It occurred to me that I needed Mercutio far more than he needed me; I was useless here. Where he was the thread holding together the fabric of my existence, I only served to physically support him. I was no physician; I could not help him.

Ah, but I could! Meagre though my knowledge of medicine was, still in that moment I remembered a fragment of what Romeo (despised name!) and I had been discussing just a day ago. "Your plantation leaf is excellent for that…for your broken shin," he had suddenly offered in the way of conversation. At the time I had called him a madman (after all, we had been talking of his beloved Rosaline and not of herbal remedies for the injuries neither of us had) but now I suppressed the stirrings of something akin to gratitude. His unexpected sentence reminded me of something that had seen Mercutio through injury before and I hoped dearly could do so again.

…

We were around seven, I think; ay, seven it must have been, for little Valentine had just been born. Mercutio and I – and Romeo, for with my then-cousin I kept close company – had been playing in this same square. I remember that the day was very hot, stiflingly so, or perhaps that was my fledgling imagination. Certainly I had no sense of foreboding; though the heat made my limbs heavy my heart was light.

Having tired of our previous game, we had then begun to run after each other as small children who are left to their own devices are so apt to do. Romeo was happy to lead the chase, and he was out in front teasing us – he was the most athletic of our group at that age. (Fitting enough for a boy who grew up to be the one chasing the maids.) As he led us across the square, his shoe caught between the uneven cobbles, and he fell. I must have cared for him, for I ran to his side, quickly overtaken by Mercutio. (Even then he was taller than I, his legs longer – though perhaps the soft flesh of childhood lay ever so slightly thicker on hid bones than mine. He was always well-fed, and I, scrawny thing, often eschewed food in favour of books.)

Ere we could reach our friend, who lay sprawled on the cobbles howling like an infant, a shadow detached itself from the mouth of a dark side alley and slunk toward him. We would have been able to count the fleas in its mage-ridden coat, had we so wished, as it laid its ugly paws on Romeo's tiny shoulders.

We had both stopped running, and Mercutio had turned to me in amusement then; I had realised that I was panting in terror. By the time my breathing had slowed Mercutio was heading determinedly in the direction of the stray, which we recognised from its scavenging in the market. Romeo – who by then had ceased his crying for he hardly dared breathe – strained to see Mercutio reach out and grab hold of the animal's savaged half-tail. The expression on Mercutio's face had been one of sheer delight.

Then the dog had turned evil yellow eyes on my mischievous friend, and there was hardly time fore Mercutio to drop his triumphant grin before the teeth sank into his leg.

They grappled for a moment, dog and boy, before Mercutio managed to shake himself free. The sight of the blood running down his leg had shocked us; we had all three of us seen the young men limping away from ill-matched duels, the cat lying where the wheel of a cart had mangled it, but for the first time in our seven-year-old lives the injured had been one of our own.

I know Mercutio had made some jest of it then, shaking his little fist at the dog as it sloped off, but his laughter was weak; he sat down heavily on the cobbles and his lower lip began to tremble. In an effort to conceal it he bit down hard with sharp front teeth –more scarlet dribbled onto his chin, but still he did not cry out.

I had been faintly aware of a soft moaning issuing from Romeo's throat, and then the muffled thump as he slumped to the floor. But only faintly, for the sight of my friend's wound had distressed me just as much as it did my kinsman, and the world had begun to spin worryingly. Desperate to staunch the flow of too-bright blood, stop it from pooling on the warm stone, I had stumbled over to a clump of tough green leaves that were stubbornly growing through a crack in the cobbles; I grabbed a child's handful and returned to Mercutio's side. Then I had thrust them at the gaping bite, covering it up the best I could.

Someone must have fetched our parents, for suddenly there they were – I felt my mother's arms close comfortingly around me, saw my aunt shake Romeo gently back into consciousness. (Our fathers were there too, and they carried heavy branches over their shoulders; I was afraid at first for I did not understand why they brought such things, wore such dark expressions. It was not until months afterwards that I noticed how the stray was missing.)

Mercutio had finally given up on trying to be brave – once his mother appeared, he let the tears fall. She bent down and lifted my leaves from her son's leg, and at once saw that the hurt could not be kissed away.

My friend would bear that scar for ten years.

…

A bandage, then, was what I needed. Plantation leaves would do little good here; even so, I scanned the square hopefully, but it remained heartlessly bare. New cobbles had replaced the old and worn of years ago. Quickly – or with as much speed as I could do so and not cause Mercutio pain – I lowered my friend so that his head rested on my knees, thus freeing my hands. Then I began to tear a wide strip of fabric from the hem of my shirt to wrap around Mercutio's wound.

My companion's eyes stared up at me; I heard him gather the breath to speak, and suddenly I knew that – now we were out of Romeo's hearing range – he was about to remind me of what had truly occurred in that brawl. I was not yet ready for him to show me for what I was, and I willed him not to open his mouth.

I think it was the obvious pleading in my eyes that decided the matter; eyes careful and expression more guarded than I had ever seen them, Mercutio began, "Benvolio…thou and I…both know…how it was…that the Capulet…was able to strike."

I concentrated on my feverish fingers, working away at the fabric as I tried desperately to ignore his words, and at last the bandage was ready; crude, poor, but sufficient. I had to hope so in any case.

Perchance, if I feigned innocence, I could stall condemnation a little. So I answered, "Ay – that villain I called cousin came between thee and Tybalt, and it was under his arm that you were struck."

Mercutio's eyes flashed angrily at my denial, but he no longer had the energy for a more vigorous rage. Instead he spoke again. "'Tis not the…truth…that thou speakest…'Twas thou that gave…that _cat_ occasion…to claw me…and thou that…meant to –"

"Nay, Mercutio, these are the words of a madman!" I insisted. "Thou art delirious."

And then I knew, by the way Mercutio's bloodless features relaxed into that familiar sly grin, that his next words would deliver his verdict; it was not one I wanted to hear. I stared down at the white cloth in my hand, and realised it would make just as good a gag as it would a bandage.

The shock of realising my dark thoughts took what fight there was left out of me, and I let Mercutio's soft, playful words sentence me to an eternity of rejection. "'Tis _thou _who art…as thou sayest…_delirious_, my…friend – is it not for _love_?" He paused to take in my resigned expression before continuing, "Before the…cat's rapier…did caress me…thou meant, if…I speak correctly…to give me…another kind of _kiss_."

Defeated, I let my downcast I speak the words that did not need to be said. Mercutio looked thoughtful for a while, and then asked, "Have there been…others?"

I thought back over my confused feelings. There had never been anyone but Mercutio; I had not understood before why the women I saw did not hold the same strange fascination as they did for my other companions. "Nay, Mercutio. Thou art…" What, though? How to express the thousand emotions that the name 'Mercutio' sent coursing through my blood? How to explain the past two days to the injured youth?

Mercutio seemed to understand my hesitation, for he nodded very slightly. Then, having asked his question, he allowed me to bandage his bleeding chest. As I bent over the wound, the so close sight of his blood took me back ten years, and bile rose in my throat. I gulped desperately and forced my spinning surroundings to steady – Mercutio's eyes glinted when he noticed my weakness, but he did not grace me with even the ghost of a smile.

Although I was as gentle as possible, I noticed every suppressed wince, every time his breath caught in his throat, until finally it was done - clumsily tied, already staining red. My own ineffectiveness threatened to overwhelm me again before I noticed Mercutio's attempt to shield his eyes from the glaring sun; he could barely lift his arm now. The sight terrified me. _Mercutio, I FORBID thee to die_. If I had voiced the silent, selfish – for I was sure that Mercutio was in more pain than death would bring him – command, then Mercutio, I knew, would have torn off the bandage for the sake of disobeying my order.

Once more, I slid my arms under his body and lifted him; he gasped in pain despite my attempts not to cause him discomfort. I noticed how he strained away from me in the way that a cat does when picked up against its will. _'How thou must hate me now!'_ I thought.

The stable seemed somehow closer now that Tybalt's clawmarks were out of sight, but I found it hard to bear the silence that stretched between Mercutio and me. Before, it had been the silence between heartbeats and footfalls, agonising but natural; now it was uncomfortable, forced. I recognised my punishment.

Our progress to the stables was mercifully quick; but though there was an empty stall, I realised its door was locked. I tried to set Mercutio on his feet and hold him upright with one arm while I struggled with the bolt, but he was too weak now for that. His legs gave way beneath him and he collapsed, making no attempt to steady himself.

He preferred to lie in the dust that even lean on my shoulder. Was my presence so abhorred?

When I reached out to help him up again, the cold, black look he gave me was enough to confirm that fear. '_Mercutio, how canst thou be so cruel?'_ I cried inside my head.

The fall had loosened the knot with which I had attempted to secure the bandage, and blood seeped into the dust through the thin white fabric. Very, very slowly and absolutely deliberately, Mercutio tugged at it until the useless cloth fluttered to the dirt floor, and his chest bled unchecked. Then he dug one shoulder into a groove between two stones and in one last great effort rolled himself over so that his back was to me.

The single word was rasped out. "Go."

But I could not leave him. I think he was not really aware of me now, anyway; so I stretched out beside him on the hard floor and listened to his shallow breathing, watched the tiny movements of his chest as he inhaled less and less air. I took his hand gently, and he did not try to stop me. With my other hand I traced patterns in his tousled hair.

As the heat and the sun and the inevitable vied to distract me, I forced them from my mind and focused on this one moment, this one nearly perfect moment, until reality could no longer be ignored.

What shook me from my brief contentment was in fact Mercutio. He whispered my name so faintly that I almost missed it. Even so, it was clearly a question. "Benvolio?"

My throat was dry from the heat and from the sudden apprehension that Mercutio's address brought on. _'Friend, as thou were, do not condemn me further!'_ I prayed, but managed to choke out,"Ay?"

"Benvolio, I forgive thee."

The hand in mine relaxed, and I knew that he was gone.


	6. Chapter Six: Alive In Triumph

Ay, I knew, but that did not mean I understood. It was beyond me how seventeen years of the most vibrant life could be cut short so quickly, such a brilliant flame carelessly extinguished; and so I clung to Mercutio's hand and to my own denial, willing the silent body beside me to breathe again. I stared at his unmoving form until my eyes began to water but I did not blink the tears away.

How long I remained like that, I cannot tell. But suddenly I realised how cold Mercutio's fingers were against my burning skin. It frightened me how death could snatch the heat from his skin even as the sun beat down ferociously, and I sought a place where the difference could not startle me so; the stable door was open and the stall inside dark and cool. I did not let go of my friend's icy hand as I held him close and stumbled into the dim stables.

In the gloom, Mercutio's white skin had an eerie light to it, though his glassy eyes remained dull. I laid his body gently down on the straw. If I did not look into those staring eyes, I could almost pretend that my dearest friend was only sleeping. A sleep from which he would never wake.

And suddenly I was overwhelmed by that truth. I had lost Mercutio, my best friend and my love, through my own stupidity. I did not deserve to live; such a vile heart as mine was should not be beating as Mercutio's lay still and cold like a stone within him…

…Then I was staring down the shaft of a dagger with its point poised at my chest. Strange; I had not heard the footsteps of its owner. The hand on the hilt shook, slick with a blood that I could tell was not its own. I vaguely recognised the hand even through the dirt that caked its nails, the foreign blood, and the tears that had silently begun to fall; I had seen that hand often. So my once-cousin had come to silence me – perchance he was afraid that I would tell how he caused Mercutio's death?

I was about to call out to him, to tell him that he was mistaken and that _I _was to blame – I was so far gone by that point that for a fleeting mad moment I did not care who he was or how he would react if I told him what had really happened. Then I noticed a slight ache in my arm, my sword arm, and looked down to see that it was not Romeo wielding the knife. Nay, it was me.

I watched my fingers tremble and almost lose the dagger, then steady themselves in time with the deep breath that I took. Blood streamed down the blade as I, for the first time since Mercutio's death fully aware of my actions, tilted the blade so that it might enter my treacherous body in the same place that Tybalt had wounded my friend: just above the heart. I could not be allowed a quick death when Mercutio had suffered so much.

'_Mercutio…' _I stayed my hand awhile as I bent down to brush a stray lock of hair from his staring eyes, and found that my lips were warm against his so cold temple when I – without really planning to – bestowed upon it what was to be my first and final kiss. A tear splashed onto his cheek, and I wiped it away; I would not further wrong his face. Then I closed his eyes with the fingers of one hand while the fingers of the other carried my dagger towards me.

I felt, rather than heard, the soft tearing of material as the blade ripped through my shirt and pierced my skin.

But I did hear the noise that came from behind me then: the sound of someone clearing their throat.

The dagger slipped away as I whirled round, startled; the footsteps of whoever it was had been muffled by my sobs. A tall stranger stood at the entrance to the stables, Mercutio's page cowering behind him. I saw the young boy's eyes dart to where his master lay, and he stifled a cry of horror when he saw that Mercutio was dead.

He understood that he had brought the physician too late.

"May I see thy friend?" Though the doctor addressed me, his eyes were looking enquiringly around the stables.

"There is naught to be done. My friend is dead," I replied, realising that I sounder fiercer than perhaps I intended. I suddenly resented the superfluous presence of the physician; he was not needed, not helpful here.

My defensive tone obviously interested the man, for he glanced sharply at me before kneeling to examine Mercutio. I only half-watched as he checked the wound, but even so I did not miss the moment that his eyes alighted on something that lay in the straw.

As I tried to follow his gaze, expressionless words from the physician caused me to turn back to him. "Ay, dead. I am sorry." I was sure that his eagle eyes, trained on me now, were scrutinising my reaction.

It could not have been hard to see that the grief on my face was genuine as I asked, in barely more than a whisper, "What is to be done with the…the body?"

His reply was brusque and efficient, just another necessary part of his job. "Thy man and I shall bear it hence." Seeing me start, he added, "If that is your wish?"

I nodded shakily, realising that he had mistaken the page as my own. "I shall…his family…they have not heard…"

Making sense of my jumbled sobs he said smoothly, "Of course. Boy," – this with a gesture to the trembling page, "– wilt thou assist me?"

The poor child tried to help him lift Mercutio's body, but he was evidently distressed – he had been a faithful servant to Mercutio, and in turn Mercutio had been a good master. His shoulders were shaking too hard from weeping to be more than a hindrance, and so the physician carefully picked up my friend and carried him away with the pageboy trailing behind him.

I watched them go. The physician had handled many dead in his time; that was clear from the respectful but slightly bored way in which he held Mercutio's body. To him, Mercutio was just another unfortunate youth, another body to be cleaned up and returned to his family for burial. Another object. There was no tenderness in the strong arms encircling my friend's limp form, no compassion in the dark eyes that stared ahead as he strode out of the square.

My tears had all but dried now, leaving me numb and detached. Weeping had exhausted all my strength; I sank back on the straw, and was startled by something glinting beside my cheek.

The bloodied dagger, which had lain in clear sight all the while that the doctor had been in the stables.

With that realisation I was suddenly alert. My frozen mind raced with thoughts – I knew that the frightened page would have struggled to get out even the words that Mercutio was seriously hurt. No doubt he had not thought to mention to the physician the cause of the injury, or its perpetrator…

New eyes looked at me in horror. I saw how my shirt was ripped as if from a brawl, how a small patch had stained red from the dagger scratch. The knife-pouch on my belt was empty; the weapon itself, brazen with scarlet, must have been the thing that caught the man's eye as he bent over my slaughtered love.

Surely the physician had reached the only possible conclusion: I had killed Mercutio.

A dry, mirthless laugh, utterly unlike my rational voice, escaped me. In a sense the physician was right, of course, to think me a murderer – and in a short while, I realised calmly, there would be no doubt on the matter.

The tension left my limbs and my breath became easy, both unhampered by the tremors with which weeping had racked my body. I relaxed; everything made crystalline sense. Tybalt had killed Mercutio, ay – and forty thousand curses on him for that – but only in place of my cur of a kinsman, in place of a lovesick idiot who would not fight like a man and like a Montague.

I straightened up and walked out of the stable, trying to ignore the part of my mind that screamed Mercutio's displeasure. His spirit was almost tangible – _'Nay, Benvolio, not this!'_ it seemed to tell me. _'Give the cat a chewed ear if thou must, send him away with one of his own fleas in that ear, but not this…' _

Alas, they were mere words in my head, not words from his mouth…O, just to hear him talk again! Even to have him condemn me more times over, tell me harshly, "Go" – anything to hear the sweet sound of his voice once more!

I stumbled, and cursed myself. There would be time for grief when the deed was done.

When I had avenged Mercutio – killed the one who was partly responsible, the fool who had cried for his lady while our friend (our? I hated the forced connection, and anyway he was more than a friend to me) died of his wounds. Died from injuries born out of the dog's cowardice.

Ay, there would be time for grief when I had killed Romeo.

'_For then will I have lost a love, a cousin – although perhaps that last is lost to me already – and surely, once the Prince hears of my crimes, my life,' _I thought.

I gripped my sword hilt tightly as I approached Romeo, who sat with his head in his hands.

He looked up at the sound of my footsteps, and the expression on his face broke my heart and my resolve. His eyes shone with hope.

Nay, I could not slaughter him. It was all I could do, all punishment I could give to both of us, to crush his hopes and my denial with the unthinkable words on my tongue.

The tears returned as I stared down into Romeo's expectant eyes and whispered, "O Romeo, Romeo…brave Mercutio's dead."


	7. Chapter Seven: Tybalt Back Again

"That gallant spirit hath aspired the clouds, which too untimely here did scorn the earth." The words were sour in my mouth, even though I tried to inject some little comfort into them with the memory of Mercutio. Fine words were no good, not when the news I brought was news of his death.

Romeo's upturned face crumpled in despair, and for one painful moment I remembered Valentine's expression as he was taken away from his dying brother. My cousin looked very like him then; helpless. Nothing but a helpless child. Any revenge I had entertained was gone in an instant.

It occurred to me, as I watched the tears spill unchecked down his cheeks, that the last time I had watched him weep it had been for his superficial love of Rosaline. (I had shed a few imagined tears myself on that day; I had allowed myself a quiet chuckle at his melodramatics, and Romeo's sharp-eared ways had forced me to quickly pretend that I wept for his sorrows. The tears I shed now in sympathy with Romeo were real enough – I could feel their salty coolness against my hot cheeks.)

Although he appeared so childlike now, his emotions betrayed a certain maturity, an ageing of spirit; they signalled the passing of an era, of childhood, and not just of Mercutio. For Rosaline, he had watered the shallow lake of love with foolish tears that belied his good sense with their immaturity.

With one final wrenched, shuddering sob, Romeo wiped the tears from his now so serious brown eyes.

Reflectively, I did the same – and startled myself. Often as children we had mimicked each other, but not since then, certainly not recently.

I had always been in awe of my confident cousin, who appeared much older than me although he was in fact three months younger; my imitations were a childish attempt to create a little of that security for myself. On occasion I had come across my kinsman secretly struggling with a book that I had left lying around (I carried them around with me while I read, then sometimes forgot where I put them after that – like a squirrel with a lost acorn). He would pretend to understand the Latin or the French if he was in my company, but I wondered at the definite hazel light in his eyes. However, for the most part it was I that played the mimic, listening to his amusing words and repeating them later to someone who would take them for my own. I copied him in play also; many were the bruises I earned trying in vain to leap over obstacles or wrestle with the older boys as he did.

Perchance – for Romeo saw how I copied his action and offered me the ghost of his old smile, the one he used to give when we were close as brothers – this meant we could somehow regain a little of the bond we had once shared? I was changed, irrevocably so, by this sad day and those that had gone before, but maybe in a strange manner this shared grief could bring us closer together.

I was not the only one to have changed. The voice that came from Romeo's throat then, after the fleeting smile had returned to the land of boyhood memories where perchance it belonged, was not his own. The sudden dip into bass – for Romeo's natural voice was not very low, perhaps a little more so than mine – reminded me of when that voice was breaking. The portentous words matched his grave tone: "This day's black fate on more days doth depend; this but begins the woe others must end."

It frightened me how he spoke to no person, staring ahead into the empty square as if addressing the very cobbles, or willing listeners to materialise from the quiet air.

When someone did appear, it was a moment before I could register the fresh cruelty of heaven. For that second of nothingness, I watched the sunlight create a halo of sparks – if devils can be said to wear those things as the angels do – from the blond mane of the creature stalking towards us.

The first emotion to hit was indignation at the sheer injustice of it all. Could it be the same sun that shone to make Mercutio seem a god, this so ungodly light that reflected from the eyes of a feline with unsheathed claw? How could Mercutio's sun now shine for the very devil?

And then there was just the overwhelming sadness. The knowledge that very soon another youth would die, cut down just as Mercutio had been. I was past caring whether it was Montague or Capulet, my kinsman, the feline murderer, or even me. I did not want to see another bloody death, or this horrible repeat of the afternoon's events; everything was too familiar, too painful. The padding footfalls sounding across the cobbles towards us. Tybalt's sharp teeth exposed in a sneer.

But there was one detail different: the blood staining the end of his proudly wielded sword. It was borne like a macabre trophy, and the sight sickened me. I was not ready for Romeo's blood or mine to join Mercutio's on that rapier's point, not yet. In some small, less violent way, I had first to avenge the one I had loved; then I would be free to join him.

Tybalt must have noted how I stared at the stained blade, for his malicious grin widened and he gestured in the air with his rapier. He pointed first at Romeo, then at me, a sweeping motion that scythed through the heavy air. _'I will kill thee, and thy kinsman too,' _said the movement. Then, with a derisive flick of his wrist, '_and I shall clean my sword on your pathetic bodies.'_

Or perchance that was my imagination, for when I looked next, his sword was sheathed and his eyes glittered slyly.

I swallowed and turned to Romeo, who stood like a troubled statue, eyes still fixed on some point in the mysterious middle distance. Had he not noticed the Capulet? I doubted he could hear or even see anything around him in that state. I pulled at his sleeve, and immediately regretted the childish action. Romeo only stared down at me, empty-eyed; now that I had distracted him, I saw the sorrow teetering behind the void, ready to flood his face.

"Here comes the furious Tybalt back again." I gestured towards the cat, but feet away now.

The transformation in my cousin was so unexpected that I stepped back in shock, out of range of his sudden wrath. Even Tybalt's coldly calm demeanour was ruffled a little.

"ALIVE! In TRIUMPH! And Mercutio SLAIN?" he roared, eyes alight with a fury that I had never known he could possess, a fury that I had wrongly ascribed to the Cat Prince's chilly manner. "Then, _Tybalt,"_ – he spat the name out like poison – "take the 'villain' back that late thou gavest me, for Mercutio's soul is but a little way above our heads, staying for _thine _or _I _to keep him company." At this mention of Mercutio's death, Tybalt smiled to himself – pleased with his vile deed – and Romeo faltered a little, no doubt from sorrow. But one look at the smug face renewed his ire, and he continued. "Either _thou,_ or _I,_ or BOTH," (from Romeo's grim expression I could tell he favoured this last) "must go with him."

"Thou wretched boy, that didst consort _him_ here, shalt with _him_ hence!" Tybalt snarled. He observed with open glee the rage that boiled beneath my fragile façade of calm. How could he dismiss Mercutio in such an anonymous way, and worse still, with so much contempt?

As I struggled to remain composed – a losing battle – he drew a shining sword.

"_This _shall determine that!" Romeo cried, unsheathing his own rapier and darting forwards.

I watched helplessly as Tybalt, too quick for that first lunge, danced out of range with a teasing smirk. I recognised that face from the earlier duel (which I preferred not to dwell on), but there it had been matched by something approaching its own kind; well, Mercutio was not unlike Tybalt in many ways, but he was never cruel. That was the difference between them.

_This _taunting was more akin to the way on alley cat might aggravate a chained dog, staying just beyond reach with a knowing glint in its smug slit eyes.

Perchance before, in my confusion of grief and misplaced anger, I had called Romeo a cur; but here his fury was unbound. His eyes still burned as if the hatred barely contained within them could strike down Tybalt with one glance.

Ay, I saw how he loathed Tybalt – who had, after all, killed his best friend – but I (though with more reason even than Romeo to wish the Capulet all the worst) did not feel it any shame that my eyes were red with sorrow and not with rage. It was as if the spirit of the one I loved somehow remained – as Romeo had mentioned, but not to wait for a companion in death. To guide me from joining the fight. Mercutio had been a jester; his tongue could be sharp, but if his rapier was he made little use of it. Another death on my head would be the only result if I drew on Tybalt, possibly my own.

I would leave the duty to Romeo. I could see it now – my kinsman's powerful grievance was superior to the lithe and clever swordplay offered by his feline opponent; for all his grandeur, Tybalt was beginning to flag slightly.

That slightly was all Romeo needed. As Tybalt brought his sword up to strike my cousin, it was parried with such force that the Capulet overbalanced and landed on all fours in the dirt. He sprang up again, but Romeo was ready. Tybalt's green eyes were shocked as they watched a Montague drive his sword through his Capulet heart.

This disbelief did not fade from his pointed features as he keeled backwards. This time, the cat neither landed on his feet nor got up again.

The moment Romeo's sword left his enemy's flesh, a look of abject horror dawned on his tearstreaked face.

There were sounds of shouting behind me, and out of the corner of my eye I saw some of the townspeople running into the square. Quickly, quietly, I advised my cousin, "Romeo, away! be gone! The citizens are up, and Tybalt slain. Stand not amaz'd," – for he still stared in dismay at the bloody corpse – "the Prince will doom thee death if thou art taken." I did not care so much for my own fate, but I refused to lose my kinsman just as he seemed to be returning to me. "Hence! Be gone! Away!"

But Romeo only stood there, eyes now flitting between the dead Prince of the Cats and his murderous sword. He moaned like an injured dog, the words 'I am Fortune's fool," just distinguishable.

The townspeople – I vaguely recognised a few as members of the watch – were nearly close enough to hear our words. Desperately, I pushed my unresponsive cousin towards a welcome sidestreet. I wished that I too could escape. "Why dost thou stay?"

Finally he seemed to leave his stupor, for he threw the approaching watch a look of terror and sprinted away. I watched his departing form shimmer in the intense heat until I could no longer ignore the commotion at my back, and was forced to turn and face the people.


	8. Chapter Eight: I Can Discover All

The man who spoke first must have been a relative of Mercutio, I think, for he shared the same shape of pale face and the same glossy black curls, and his eerily familiar black eyes held a bitter sorrow. "Which way ran he that killed Mercutio?" Though he was a grown man, his voice cracked as he halted at the name, and a tear gleamed in his eye.

With an anguished hunger, those same eyes combed the alley down which Romeo had run, the square itself, the still-gaping stable door. Then they settled on me. I saw what little use it would be to protest my innocence when I knew that I _had_ been a fair part of Mercutio's death; Tybalt was killed anyway and so I, exempt from avenging my love, was by my own ruling quite ready to die. But just as I was deciding how to curse the physician – with an ailment to his tongue for bringing the watch here, or with the same plague that Mercutio had called? – the man continued impatiently, "Tybalt, that murderer, which way ran he?"

Bottling the rush of relief, I silently thanked the young page who – I was sure – had been the one to tell how his master died. Ay, such a true servant as he would not let his master's killer go unknown. The boy had clearly been full of grief as he stumbled after the physician, but not so full as to have had no space to nurture in his heart a hatred of Tybalt that I had sensed even through his sorrow and mine.

And I? I too had briefly hated Tybalt, far more than hated, for his callous slaughter of the one I loved – but now, now that his nine lives had been stripped away with one sword thrust, now that he was no longer a Prince but just as much a boy as Mercutio, I could not hate him.

I glanced down at the slumped figure, and wondered if I had been right. Was he a boy at all? For as I looked, I saw how his mouth had fallen slightly open and his teeth gleamed through the gap, sharper than before. And here was the stranger thing: his skin was gilded with a thousand tiny hairs, and from that fur poked two decidedly feline ears. The fingers tensed over his fleshy palms were stunted, almost dwarfed by wicked claws longer than his nails had ever been. There was blood on the talons of his sword hand, the hand that had killed my Mercutio…

Violently I shook my head. When the dizziness abated Tybalt was human once more and the dark-haired man – who had been joined by a handful of others, all stockier than him and wheezing a little (but none of whom I could name, though I vaguely recognised faces) was regarding me with a quizzical note in his black eyes. I swallowed before answering quickly, "There lies that Tybalt." I did not trust myself to look at Tybalt as I gestured to the body.

Triumphant this time, the man's eyes gleamed as he cried, "Up, sir, go with me!" When no acknowledgement came, he waved his sword threateningly at the motionless figure.

I studied his pale face carefully, a little cautious lest it should morph into that of some strange beast while I watched. The light in his eyes, the menacing way in which he wielded his weapon – I saw how, consumed by grief and hatred, he was driven by not mind but emotion. Indeed, I did wonder how little of his mind was at that moment truly concerned with sanity. Could he not see that his foe, the one he was attempting to arrest, was dead?

It seemed he could not, for then – growing angry at Tybalt's silence – he demanded, "I charge thee in the Prince's name, OBEY!"

Another member of the watch stepped forward. He laid a hand on the man's shoulder as if to calm or perhaps gently restrain him, and – pointing at Tybalt – whispered something in his ear.

There was a metallic clatter as the black-haired man's sword fell to the cobbles, at odds with its owner's stunned silence.

Mercutio's relative stared at Tybalt, and we stared at him as very deliberately he leant over and spat in the Capulet's dead face. Then he turned back to his fellow citizens, who parted to let him pass. I saw his shoulders were shaking as he walked away.

The sudden blare of a trumpet startled us all out of our watchful quiet. Following the music, a drumming of feet as a crowd charged into the square. Hooves beat a pompous tattoo on the cobbled floor, brassy notes competing to be heard. As I turned towards the still audible trumpet sound, I recognised its pattern; a fanfare, undoubtedly that of Escalus, prince of Verona.

Ay, it was; for when I had turned, the prince's horse – a great portly animal, plump and shiny as a newfallen chestnut – was pawing the ground with one iron shoe as Escalus pulled him to a halt. The trumpeter glanced up the prince's imposing figure; a curt nod and he let the instrument from his lips. I could tell then that the prince meant to speak.

We fell silent, every one of us, as we waited. Even those who had chased behind the prince were quiet, though their panic emanated from them like steam from the stagnant pools of last week's thunderstorms. And I was reminded of some similar occurrence; it was a while back, last year perhaps? In another lifetime, certainly.

…

Nay, it was only yesterday that I had stood in that same square, Escalus with stern face glaring round at the assembled, my swordhand heavy with guilt. Tybalt had glared at me, disappointment etched on his pointed features, and hissed like the cat he was, "Thou wilt not escape so unhurt next time, Montague. I vow, I speak thee true." Then he had straightened up as he caught the prince's air of displeasure, throwing me a last sneer as he did so.

I could not help but think that – while the prince would have been more than displeased had either of our swords not been as bright and unstained as the day they were first forged and polished – Tybalt was the opposite. This time, he had failed to catch his mouse, and his pride was sore.

It had been no small scrap, either. To begin with there had been nothing much; I had come across two servants of my own house – Romeo's man, Balthasar, and Abraham who served my uncle – exchanging blows with a pair of Capulets (whose names I neither knew nor cared for). Not wishing any to be hurt, I had drawn, thinking to part them. "Part, fools!" (For it was idiocy to be engaged in such a duel; I doubted whether the feud was worth the indignity of brawling in the streets.) "Put up your swords," I urged them, "you know not what you do." They had hesitated, at least to look at me – the former pair with guilty faces, the second with an expression of barely concealed derision. The fight halted. But it was then that the voice, slick with poisonous loathing, had spoken. I knew its owner even ere the stop of the first sentence.

"What! Art thou drawn among these heartless hinds? Turn thee, Benvolio, look upon thy death." Tybalt Capulet.

I _had_ turned then, but out of annoyance rather than any submission or answer to his threat. I saw with horror that the foolish youth had drawn his sword.

Through gritted teeth I replied, "I do but keep the peace. Put up thy sword, or manage it to part these men with me."

The very idea of acting thus – at the behest of a Montague, preventing servants of his house from fighting when he would rather see a duel – had clearly repulsed him. He had shuddered, and his eyes were blazing with hatred as he cried, "What! _Drawn, _and talk of PEACE? I _hate_ the word, as I hate HELL, all MONTAGUES, and THEE!" He had moved forward a step, to spit on the ground by my shoe; and then, while I was distracted in backing away, suddenly he sprang with a frenzied yell of, "Have at thee, _coward!"_

I moved my sword up in enough time to meet his blow and drive it back. The savage clang of foil on foil was a terrible sound, almost alien to my ears. Never so close had I heard it before.

It was shaming to look back on it afterwards, but ay, we fought. Once I had shown signs of trying to make my own lunges, rather than parrying blow after vicious blow from his experienced rapier, Tybalt's eyes had lost their disdainful glare and taken on a lustre of excitement.

The noises of our skirmish must have roused the citizens, for they had come running armed into the square. (That, too, was as it was now – but yesterday they had come without their prince). "Down with the Capulets!" came the raucous cry from one side; and from the other, "Down with the Montagues!"

As swords had clashed all around us, Tybalt and I fought on, matching blows and neither wounding the other. I was glad of that; even a Capulet injured by my hand would be a great guilt, though others of my house would not see it so.

I had caught a glimpse of Tybalt's old uncle among the others, calling for his sword. Then someone else had run into the fray, and I had stopped suddenly. My uncle, Romeo's father. To have him hurt on my account…

Neglecting the sword that was too close to my own, I started forwards, calling to my uncle. In the midst of the riot an arm – thankfully not armed – had collided with my stomach, and I had fallen to the stinging cobbles.

I had known that the accident was indeed that, or the hand that brought me down would have been attached to a sword.

I had attempted to scramble to my feet then, and found another hand, armed this time, blocking my way.

"Nay, Montague, be not so hasty. I want thee _down,_ on thy _knees_, so that I may…" He let the end of the hissed sentence hang in the air, but his sword - hot from the suddenly so brutal sun – lightly traced a burning line across my neck. I saw from his glittering eyes that he would not hesitate to kill me for the honour of his house, and from the continuing riot around us that I was the only one to have heard Tybalt's threat. So I would die here.

I had thought of Mercutio, and how disappointed he would be that I had met my end in a common brawl, nothing noble, and – perchance worse – that I had done so at the hands of a Capulet. (In truth, Mercutio was of neither house, but it was clear where his loyalties lay.) _'Friend, I am sorry,'_ I wanted to say.

There were many other things I had wished to tell him, but he had not been there to hear – and even if he had, my lips could not have formed the words. Instead, I had closed my eyes, so that the last thing I saw might not be Tybalt's face but Mercutio's. I had concentrated on that picture as I waited for the foil to strike one final time.

It was only Escalus' arrival that had prevented Tybalt from slaying me. The hoof and drum beats heralding his arrival were lost in the furore, but once his presence was realised nearly the whole square fell silent. A particularly hot-headed pair (whose names I knew not) continued to trade blows, oblivious.

"Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace, profaners of this neighbour–stained steel –" began the Prince, addressing us all in anger; then, noticing the two who were still struggling, "Will they not hear?" He had motioned to some of the watch to part the fighters, and the young men had been drawn away from each other, still shrieking insults.

They could not have been fourteen years of age, and yet they were so full of hate that they bore swords against the other.

The Prince's angry words had continued to come, but they brought on too much guilt for me to listen. How could I chide others for quarreling, as I did so often, when I had all but caused this? I could think only of my hypocrisy and how it would have appeared to Mercutio had he been there.

…

I was still hearing the Prince, but his words were different now. A question and not a condemnation, though his tone was the same. "Where are the vile beginners of this fray?"

What was there to tell but the truth? And so I told it, simpler perhaps than it had been – Mercutio had forgiven my part in the fight, and there was no need to trouble others by way of its mention – but the truth nonetheless. "O noble Prince, I can discover all the unlucky manage of this fatal brawl: there lies the man –" I pointed, without looking at Tybalt, "slain by young Romeo, that slew thy kinsman, brave Mercutio."

I felt little guilt at what could have been seen as my betrayal of Romeo; to lie, to protect him, would have been to sully Mercutio's memory. There would be no false accounts of his death, save the omission of my part.

Besides, none heard my voice over the dreadful cry that went up then - "Tybalt, my cousin! O my brother's child!"

Lady Capulet ran forwards. I had never seen a lady run before – they seemed more inclined to glide, in a stately fashion, or at most to hurry, daintily – but run she did, pushing aside the men in her way and falling on her knees beside her dead kinsman. She broke into hoarse sobs, rendering her next words incoherent. I watched, knowing all too well the feeling of having a loved one die.

When her shoulders shook not so violently, and her sobs were only intermittent, she raised her face. Etched across it was a terrible rage. "Prince, as thou art true, for blood of _ours_ –" here, she looked down at Tybalt again, and dissolved once more into inconsolable tears. There was a pause, and then, recovering, she shook her fist and shouted vehemently, "Shed blood of _Montague!_"

Her piercing blue eyes bored sharply into mine for a moment before the tears came again.

The Prince turned to me. "Benvolio, who began this bloody fray?"

. "Tybalt, here slain, who Romeo's hand did slay," I started, avoiding Lady Capulet's outraged glare. And so I told him, and I told them all, how Romeo had tried to prevent the quarrel, and how he had failed. I described the fight – for my uncle's sake, I made Romeo look brave and not the idiot he had been.

"An envious thrust from Tybalt hit the life of stout Mercutio," I stated. It was not an accusation. But mentioning Mercutio's name in such a context was so hard. I wanted to scream that of course it was Tybalt's fault, or maybe Romeo's, or even mine. I wanted to blame someone for the death, for his death…

I could not look at the assembly of listeners as I voiced that sentence, and I had to mumble the name. No-one seemed to notice, or rather think it out of line for me to grieve the youth who had, after all, been my best friend. So I swallowed, and carried on.

They heard how Tybalt fled after the killing, how he returned and how Romeo had struck him down and then deserted the scene. It was not easy for my uncle to hear that about his only son, and I prayed quietly that his heart might not trouble him at the news. He had not been so well of late.

"This is the truth, or let Benvolio die," I finished. '_Let it be untrue.'_

Most seemed content with the explanation – though whether 'content' was the right word for my shocked uncle was another matter – except Lady Capulet. Hysterical now, she scrambled to her feet in an ungainly manner and shrieked, "He is kinsman to the Montague; affection makes him false, he speaks not true."

'_Lady, thou speakest aright_,' I thought. Ay, affection – but not so tame a feeling, and not for Romeo.

"Some TWENTY Montagues fought in this black strife, and all those _twenty_ could but kill ONE life!" She was almost sneering, but those eyes were full of poison.

Her voice steadied a little. "I beg for justice, which _thou_, Prince, must give – Romeo slew Tybalt, Romeo MUST NOT LIVE!" The last three words were screamed at me, at Lord Montague, at the world and its various injustices – of which I was one in her eyes. How dare I be here, alive to tell the tale of her nephew's end, when her dear Tybalt was dead?

How dare I be here when Mercutio was not?

My agonised musing was interrupted by Escalus. "Romeo slew him, he slew Mercutio – who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?"

My uncle flung himself at the Prince's feet, pleading, "Not Romeo, prince, he was Mercutio's friend; his fault concludes but what the law doth end – the life of Tybalt."

I saw how Lady Capulet was about to launch herself at my uncle, and how the prince stepped between them, ready with some hasty but nevertheless wise judgement that I did not want to hear. Romeo would be punished; how, I was loath to know. If he was to be executed, I would rather not hear of it. I would not stand by and lose another friend; and so, like Romeo had done, and like Tybalt before him, I turned from the crowd and fled.


	9. Chapter Nine: Hence In Haste

**A/N: I've got nothing against homeless people, either. Once again, I'm only trying to create an atmosphere appropriate for the time period.**

I wondered many things as I left that square behind. Why did no-one pursue me? Perchance they realised, as I did, that my best counsel was my own? Nay, they were more interested in Romeo's fate – and so would I be, were I merely a bystander. They were naught but a pack of hounds, some baying for Romeo's blood and some for his pardon.

What would the Prince's verdict be? Escalus was a fair ruler, but he was not known for his leniency – if he thought it just that Romeo should die, then he would spare my cousin no mercy. Once Romeo could be found…where had he fled to?

And where did _I_ mean to go? Street after street burned at the soles of my shoes as I ran, until finally the things fell apart. I kicked them off, not stopping, hardly caring if someone found them and wondered my whereabouts. I did not know that myself.

My name sounded down the road to me, and my heart leapt at the familiar voice. It was a little altered from what I recognised, higher-pitched perhaps, but that was natural when it called in such a way, and against heat so fierce it could bend the very air and make it shimmer; why not sound as well? And what matter anyway? All that had happened the past hour was naught but a dream; Mercutio was returned to me!

I twisted around, poised to run in his direction. Then I felt the joy drain from my face, the hope from my soul, as I saw little Valentine standing at the end of the alley. He cried again, "Benvolio!" but more in shock this time I think; I knew how I must look to the boy, with my clothes torn and my hands bloody and my feet bare.

Once again, I was faced with the stark truth. I had loved Mercutio for two short days; the sun had set but twice on my secret ere it sank below the horizon of his life and my happiness, never to rise again for him and – I was sure – never for me.

The sound of Valentine's miserable sobbing rent the air that still rang with his childish tones – how could I ever have mistaken them for the golden voice with which that air would never again be gilded, except in such desperation? – and I stared into a face which seemed much aged from this awful day. On the cusp of adulthood, I had been robbed of the best friend and first love I ever had; but at ten years of age, he had lost his only brother. Now that overwhelming disappointment had added to my misery, who could tell which of us had the more wretched expression plastered across our tearstained countenance?

The little thing stumbled towards me, but I did not wait. Instead I turned away from him and took up my senseless running again, wanting only to distance myself from the too painful memories stirred by Valentine's resemblance to the one whose name I suddenly found I dared not think, for fear of breaking down.

I am sure that more of the faces that I passed as I charged on were ones I knew. None of the shocked figures whose images I only half-caught made any attempt to apprehend me, though, so perchance they had not heard the terrible news, or had no concern of it. More heartless, harmless hounds, the whole lot of them.

Another road to sprint or stumble along, depending on my crumbling resolve. The need to escape seemed to drain away all in a moment; my feet suddenly tired, and the world slowed down. Recalcitrant breath returning to my reluctant lungs – the freedom of the run vanished, and with it the briefest of peace afforded by a consciousness over-fatigued to quibble – I was at first pleased to find it raining. Each fallen drop distorted my view of a place that I knew too well, of cobbles whose very pattern was all but traced on my mind.

But this rain was warm as it trickled the blood, the dirt from my face, and salty as I cried to see my home.

The building stood before me in no kind of splendour, no heavenly light save that which the weight of childhood memory pressed upon its walls. That glow grew faint when dampened by the tears of realisation that tied to this house was a life I no longer led. Could no longer lead, now that _he_ was gone…

Tybalt had avoided his name in the same manner – what villainy it was to deny my friend's memory that simple service! It mattered not that I evaded the word for pain rather than disgust; he – _Mercutio – _deserved more than to be anonymous.

"Mercutio," I whispered, the pattern lingering on my tongue like the sweetest honey, or the bitterest drink. Both a remedy for the pain of loss and a terrible poison only to aggravate it. I had once compared Heaven and Hell to walking by his side; the same was true of the simple act of voicing his name. "Mercutio."

"MERCUTIO!" My desperate voice called back at me as the name reverberated off the suddenly forbidding walls – so close and yet so closed. _'I will never cross thy curséd threshold again,'_ I vowed, looking my last at the house I knew so well, but which did not know me any longer. Afraid that the echoing shout would raise pursuers again, I resumed running, looking only straight ahead and never at the houses on either side of me. The sight of another familiar building – or perchance a recognizable face at a window – would surely be enough to halt me for good this time.

And so it was not until the cobbles at my feet gave way to grime and dirt that I dared chance a look at my surroundings. By some unlucky fortune I had wandered into one of the less salubrious parts of town, an area whose very buildings seemed to lean conspiratorially in on each other to plot the end of the next well-to-do individual to cross their crooked shadows. There was naught to do to stop myself falling victim, save keep up my mad pace without wavering.

It was high afternoon, but it was as if what little light could penetrate this far was tainted by the fetid aura of such a place. The stench of a thousand summers' worth pervaded my senses, each breath foul in my parching throat. My lungs cried out for air as I pounded on in time with my racing heartbeat; every gasp that I could give them was rejected for its vileness. Soon my head's insistent throbbing joined the drum rhythm of my footsteps. But I could not stop, or once I had I would never start again.

Figures moved in the shadows, stooped and twisted things all of them. I dared not look at their faces, or whether they had faces at all and were not ghosts of my fevered imagination. I did not trust the heat-rambling of my conscious mind not to paint every one with the accusatory stare of Tybalt Capulet or, worse still, Mercutio. I knew just the face it would be…the one he wore as he ordered me to leave, let him die in peace. His features set in a hard, unrelenting mask. His black eyes cold though the sun streamed down…

In my panic I stumbled over something at my feet. A bundle of filthy rags? Huddled at the edge of the squalid path, two hungry eyes staring up at me from under what passed for a hood…nay, it was a person, one of the city's vagabonds by the look of it. 'It' would have to suffice as a description – I was in no mind to stay and discover whether the wretched creature was man or woman, and would have hastily left had a scrawny hand not wrapped itself around my ankle.

The other hand, a dirty clawed thing, was thrust at me. The message was clear: a plea, or rather a demand, for alms.

My own hand went to my belt instantly, and without a thought I untied my purse and flung it in the face of the slumped beggar. Money was useless to me wherever I was going; a vague idea of my goal had begun to take shape, not a plan as such but merely somewhere to run towards as I ran _from_ the horrors of the past day. Nay, I would find no salvation in riches.

The amazed figure stared at the pouch, disbelieving. Perchance it was suspicious that I had given so much so readily. But when gnarled fingers had scrabbled to untie the ribbon that held it, and piggish eyes had greedily beheld the gold within, there was no doubt left. Still, it was a few moments before my ankle was released from the surprisingly strong grip of the other hand; very likely I had been forgotten in the immediate excitement that the money provided.

No time elapsed between the hand giving up its hold and me scrambling to my feet, ready to run even ere I had fully regained my balance. By now my muscles were trembling with exertion and my breath, still so rank of taste that I might have vomited had I the strength to, came in gulps that sent flames licking through my body. And each breath was never quite enough to satisfy, never deep enough that I might feel the relief it brought my heaving chest. But I clung to the willpower that told my aching limbs to move, and move I did – as fast as weakness would allow – away from the beggar, ere they could start to wonder what else of value I could spare. The answer was very little, but I would not take any chance that they would believe me on that one.

I might have collapsed then had I not at that moment rounded a final corner and sighted before me the southern gate of the city. At once, although it was stone, I imagined it carved from a single glistening pearl, like one of the twelve at which – even now – Mercutio was standing, waiting to enter the City as I left this earthly one behind me. Perchance he was looking down at me as his sins were weighed (I could not help but think that surely the scales on that side were empty. He had been mischievous, fiery, but when had he done a truly bad deed?) Did he approve of the plan – nay, the seed of a notion that one day might come to fruit – that had begun to take form in my mind? I thought he must; it was, after all, his idea. Had we not, as boys, imagined the professions we would choose in life? Romeo to follow in his father's footsteps, Mercutio in those of his uncle (Paris was ignored for that game; it was our friend, we insisted, who would one day become prince of Verona, not he), and I…

"When we no longer have the Friar to confide in, Benvolio, thou wilt be the one to take his place!" Mercutio would laugh.

I would not speak to him again, though, until I entered through that gate myself; I had the trust of nobody but myself that I was right. Whether or not my flickering, fleeting design would ever be met…how could I know? But I did believe in one thing, and that was my direction; the path taken by my feet, linked, if I should succeed, to the road my life would follow. What I abandoned was not merely a place – I left behind me, too, something less quick to shake. The person I used to be, the life I used to lead, all were gone. Violence had scattered the pieces of that existence far and wide. Only the search for peace could help me now.

Slowing to a halt for long enough to slip my dagger from its belt, I stared at the silver weapon, thinking how I had desired it to end my life in that stable. How easy it would be to join Mercutio in moment…but that was not the kind of peace I could have. I wanted it, ay, but I had no right to it, not yet. I knew of something I could do in atonement for my many sins, and by way of helping to restore harmony. A way forward in life that would not lead to another youth bleeding dry on the hasty point of another boy's rapier. That might stop those boys – for that was the worst part, the age at which hatred began to devour innocents – from becoming enemies at all. A path which would teach me never again to draw a sword against another human, to be moved to join the pointless fighting.

Having resolved thus, I dropped the dagger in the dirt of the roadside, and picked up pace again.

The road burned my skin, though the sun's hot glare was momentarily obscured as I passed under the shady arch marking the entrance. The exit, for me. I had laid my last footprints, and the relics of my former life, in this place I where I could no longer stay. _'Verona, thou art not so fair,'_ I whispered as I ran, and I did not look back.

…

I felt the ghosts of those I had known clinging to me, refusing to be flung back. Benvolio Montague I had left standing in the shade beneath the stone archway; he did not trouble me. But the others seemed to clamour for attention, begging me not to cast them aside as I had the shoes, the money, the dagger. My memories of Romeo as a child – always accompanied by my slight mousy figure, and by the dark-haired one to whom Valentine now bore such a resemblance – wrestled with those of the melancholy adolescent, with the way he had been too deep in his latest lovesickness, often, to notice our troubles, and with everything he had done in the past day. Despite these last, I almost could not bear to let my cousin go. Then I realised that Romeo Montague would probably never appear in my life again – he had fled from the Prince, either to be found and punished, to remain hidden or to flee far from Verona to some place I had no means of knowing. With that knowledge, I forced Romeo from my mind, blessing goodbye the long years we had spent in each other's company and urging my feet onwards.

Even as I grew dizzy from the heat, my head was full of those I had left behind. It was remarkably easy to bid my parents their silent farewell. I had woken this morning as no more than a youth, and I knew that the day's terrible course had changed me; the night would fall instead on a man, a different man, and one now independent of the people who had raised and loved Benvolio. I wished them well, but they could not be part of this, and so I left them too.

And suddenly one voice shouted above the others in my mind, the words dripping with venomous hatred. _'Thou allowed my death, my death at the hands of thy kinsman! Filth thou art both, like all Montagues! And filth like that _weak_ friend of thine whose death came at worthy hands…I was better, Benvolio! I killed him…and thou allowed that to happen, didst thou not? Wouldst thou deny it, cur?'_

Doubt, loss, guilt, hatred; I could not carry such a load. Tybalt, Tybalt was right. I had murdered them both…The heat, the pain ripping my head and body, raged fiercer than any hellfire. _'Let Satan take me,'_ I thought in desperation as my feet moved without direction, stumbling against every pebble. _'What can I suffer from Hell than that which I have already brought about _myself?'

Somehow, I had come to lie with my face to the road; I registered not the fall itself, only a vicious stabbing agony in my sword arm and the throbbing pain of bruises forming where my body had first grazed the ground. The dark surface blistered against my skin, and I screamed the name of the only one I loved.

"MERCUTIO!" But the fire only grew hotter when silence answered my pleading. To scream again would be impossible; to moan, I could just manage. Tybalt's accusations ringing true in my ears, I forced the pain aside and the question out from dry lips. My words tasted of earth and blood, and I knew they would be answered with only darkness.

"Oh, Mercutio, my friend…my love…wherefore didst thou forgive me?"


	10. Chapter Ten: A Barefoot Brother

Then out of the blackness came faces, drifting towards me with empty eyes, and voices that twisted around me in an inexorable web. The more I struggled, the faster the onslaught came; the louder the voices, issuing from tongueless gaping mouths, resonated in my aching head. I heard a man I knew well, Francesco Montague, wailing in grief – or was it pain? – and watched as his face, the only one alive amongst the throng of dead, contorted in an anguish that should have torn asunder the heart of his only son. But I kept that closed to him. He would not reach me, not now I had abandoned that life, and neither would I call him father.

The howling became coherent words, as his face morphed into the pale visage Mercutio wore like a death mask.

'_Magnificat anima mea Dominum_…'

The voice was not his; it seemed to be that of many, but intertwined, a single cord of sound. And the words were foreign to those unblemished dry-bled lips. Mercutio's quick spirit had tired of his studies long ere they were done with him, and so his Latin to mine was like my wit to his – as nothing. Besides, the closest he had ever approached such sacred utterance was to take the Lord's name in vain over some trivial anxiety of mine.

"By the Good Lord above, Benvolio, I swear thou art a fool," he would laugh, snatching up the paper that I fretted over so. "Signior Salvatori dotes on thee as if thou wert a favoured pet, and I a mongrel cur. If thou hast mistaken some small word in thy exercises," – and here he would squint at the page as if the erroneous letters were really so little – "he is unlike to note it much. If he does, he will but think it a slip thou hast made while distracted by a _childish prank_ of mine." (His imitation of my tutor was so accurate I would soon be laughing along with him.) He would grin then, a flash of whitest teeth and a dancing spark in his blacker eyes, to show he felt no bitterness. Mercutio never possessed a heart for hard feeling (even his dislike, could it be thus described, of the Capulet household never endured beyond sight or mention of their number) and in any case he cared not whether I was better at my books.

O, that I were a poor dumb fool, and he the scholar, and alive again! For even as I called to him, searching for recognition in those soulless eyes, he dissolved into nothing, and the nothing into his brother.

And how hard it was to ignore the piteous cries of Valentine, who before me bore the face he had worn as the older youths took him from the wounded Mercutio. But cruel as it felt there was no other way; I could not retain this life, I knew, and be tied to the former. So I turned my eyes away ere his could lock onto mine, and could only tell that Mercutio's image had returned when the singing resumed.

'_Ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generationes…'_

I glanced back and saw that once again, it both was and was not him. For his features I recognised, though they were clouded by marauding Death, but these words were none that he had ever spoken in his lifetime. When Mercutio sang – and he had a fine voice – there was never a word of this calibre that graced his tongue. No, when he sang, it was in good humour and high spirits. These voices – this voice – that issued forth was one of a strange melancholy and yet not, eerie but somehow uplifting.

'_Fecit potentiam in brachio suo, dispersit superbos mente cordis sui…'_

I called again, "Mercutio!" as the dark blanket, the void of oblivion began to creep upon me once more; and, desperate not to lose him, I called again; but he could not be stayed, for one cannot forever keep hold of the dead.

**…**

'_Suscepit Israel puerum suum, recordatus misericordiae_…'

The distant chanting seemed a sound that could not be of this this earth. How could mere human voices create such beautiful melody? Perchance, then, they were _not_ the voices of humans, these that finally stirred me from an already fever-broken slumber. Perchance they were angels, and this where I found myself was really the next world.

I had to see, had to verify my surroundings; for how could I hope to discern where I was – indeed, whether or not I still lived, or rather had passed into heaven – when only the black of ebbing sleep, painted on the back of my eyelids, answered my gaze? And yet it was such a strain to move any muscle; the fever had broken while I dreamt, but its effects lingered on.

My leaden-lidded eyes, once open, perceived no room that ever I had seen before. Small, pleasantly enough – a rectangle with a stone floor and a fairly high roof – it was yet light, though a gentle blue dusk was beginning to fall in the courtyard garden that, through the pillars further down the side wall, I could glimpse from one corner of my eye. I hungered for a better view, but my head throbbed so that it might shatter if I so much as twitched.

Though there were other beds in this room – besides that in which I found myself to be lying, clean cool cloth a relief on my burning skin – none were occupied save for the endmost one. Those sheets, though, were draped over the whole body of its occupant, and only one wrinkled hand, its ancient clawed knuckles hanging so that they nearly brushed the flagstones below, protruded from the shroud.

My immediate unease – I was the only living soul within the room, a room I had neither knowledge nor memory of – mingled with relief when a figure, clothed in a habit that hooded his face, entered. (From, I assumed, the garden, although I had not been able to catch sight of him before.) And when I saw his attire, I saw too that by some miracle I had been brought to the very place for which I think I had meant to head, had not my delirious wanderings been by fever crippled.

"Thou hast awoken, brother, I see," he began, his voice rich and deep, as he closed with softly echoing footfalls the distance between us. "Welcome, traveller. Art thou not a little better than when we found thee?"

He was near enough for me to have seen his face, if I could but sit up; I found upon trying this, however, that my arm had burst into a blaze.

Falling back again with a cry, I made to extinguish the fire, and saw none put out. But still the flames licked at my skin from the inside.

"Thy arm pains thee?"

Not trusting my tongue with any word but the name that still lingered there, ghost-like, I nodded slightly. A hiss escaped through my clenched teeth at the unexpectedly savage pain of the motion.

"Let me see it." His tone, as he stepped closer, was that of one who knew beyond any shadow of doubt exactly what they were doing. And so, though I still had no idea even of the stranger's name, I pulled away the sheet on that side to give my arm to his examination.

It had been bandaged, I saw – not the clumsy plantain wrappings with which I had staunched Mercutio's bleeding leg when the dog bit him so many years back, nor the hasty torn bindings that he had plucked away rather than live with my shame. Nay, these bandages were the work of an experienced physician.

As I stared up into the now-visible face of the monk attending to my injury, I saw quite clearly the expressionless dark eyes that the hood had been hiding. The way that his stature caused him to stoop as he leant over. The strong, quick fingers working at the bandage. The complete lack of feeling, as if I were nothing but a slab of meat.

Ignoring the daggers that ripped through my side as I did so, I snatched my arm away and scrambled back. "It was not I that killed him! Please, I beg thee, accuse me not! It was another's sword that wounded him – please! _O, Mercutio_…" I moaned, unable to stop the word from tumbling out.

The monk was standing there half-smiling, and I realised with relief that it had been naught but the trappings of the fever that caused me to see the physician in his place. Ay, he was tall, but so were many men; his eyes were not dull, not now that the hood's shadow did not obscure them so.

"Peace, brother. Thou art delirious."

The words, the very words I had spoken to Mercutio only a little while ago – although in truth it felt like many a lifetime back.

"Ay," I mumbled, and meekly offered my arm once more.

As his fingers skimmed over the bruise-blackened skin – so lightly the pain was minimal – and re-tied the bandage, he talked. "A serious hurt, though not one that cannot be healed some, I think. Thou needs must rest a while."

My voice was barely a whisper, stealing across the air that still rang with chanting. "How long?"

"A month, perchance two. Thou wilt still be able to write, I hope, but I am afraid thy days of fencing are no more."

'_I would lose my arm altogether just to have him back,_' I thought, but of course I did not say that. Instead, I smiled as a feeling of great elation spread suddenly through me. This would make my life all the easier.

The tall monk watched me closely, bemused. "This is good news for thee?"

"Ay. I renounced the sword ere I was brough to this place, but I might yet have been driven back to it."

Looking pleased, but still a little puzzled, the monk asked, "Why didst thou make such a vow, brother?"

I locked eyes with him as I spoke. "I wouldst thou should call me _brother_ in earnest. I would stay longer than this arm makes me, and become one of thy order."


	11. Chapter Eleven: In These Confusions

My heart beat as if it would drum me to my own execution in the long moment for which the monk did not make any answer, but simply regarded me silently and with thoughtful eyes.

What if I were to be turned away? I had not been called or put to this at an early age, like the other novices I wished to join; I was but a stranger, feverish at that, and much as _I_ believed what I said – that I was willing, eager even, to take up a life here – who would take my word for anything but rambling? Once my injured arm was mine once again, for certain I would be sent back on my aimless way. And what then? Could I find somewhere else a holy place where I could honour Mercutio's memory by living for peace – Venice perhaps? I was doubtful of finding another. Had I not come close to death on the road to Mantua? A dread began to settle in my stomach at the thought of journeying forth alone.

Happily, it seemed that my fears might be founded on little. The tall monk smiled, and declared, "It would seem that our even service has finished," – indeed there was no more chanting to be heard – "and so, I think, I may discuss this matter with the abbot. While we talk with each other, wouldst thou like to hold conference thyself with one of the novices of thy own age?"

Much as I appreciated the monk's kindness to me, I was indeed keen to see and speak with another youth. I had taken my old existence in my hands and destroyed it; Benvolio Montague no longer existed, and with his disappearance seemed to follow many, many years of living. I stared at my hands in silence, wondering why they were not the veined, gnarled claws of the ancient man Mercutio's death had made me.

Forcing myself to look the monk in the eye – for I still feared that the gentle face might once again morph into some terrible mask of hatred – I nodded. He could not mistake the movement. Ay, it would be a wonder to be reminded that – old as I felt – it was grief, that weight on my back, and not the canker of age. And perchance, if I could learn enough from this novice, I might persuade the abbot to let me stay.

Another smile from within the shadowing cowl. "Well, the novices here are not few in number, but I think one among them would be particularly pleased to meet thee."

And I thought suddenly that he must know who I was, and why I had come, and that somehow Romeo had escaped here and it was he of whom we now spoke; I shook my head frantically, sending poison darts of pain down my back –

- then the panic passed, and so did the remembrance of the cousin that I did not have.

"Perchance thou art not ready," the monk said quickly. "Truly, I am sorry to have distressed thee. But wouldst thou still I ask thy sanctuary of the abbot?"

"Ay. And I would very much like to meet this novice you speak of – tell me, what name does he go by?"

The monk's doubtful expression betrayed his uncertainty about my health. My state of mind.

Was he right to question that? Perchance it was not, as I had thought, only the remnants of the fever that caused these delusions. After all, I had lost my heart to Mercutio, some might say my soul too; what was to say that my sanity also had not been lost in the heat of the terrible afternoon? It was a prospect that terrified me. I had left all else behind me, and only my modest intellect remained to show me who I was. I had always been the thinker – the fool, now, that was Mercutio's job.

…

It had begun with a dream, and a story. Now, Mercutio was a master of many things, but with that love for words, that gilded tongue, perhaps the weaving of strange and wonderful tales was his greatest skill of all.

I was not alone in my rapt attention as we clustered around him, hungering for the next word to be spoken. They listened purely for the story, I both for that – he was truly an artist in his telling – and just to hear his voice. I hummed _Heart's Ease_ very, very softly as he began to speak, thinking on the song's lyrics. 'Music with her silver sound.' Surely that could only refer to the voice that I wished I could drink in forever, living not off air or water or any earthly sustenance but only and always Mercutio's dazzling words? I stopped my noise then, for I did not want to miss any of what promised to be another finely crafted story – and besides, I had little of either ear or voice for a tune…

Against the deep velvet blue of the sky at midnight, his pale face eerily lit by the flicker of the nearest torch, our friend could have been a spirit. Bizarre shadows danced across his skin, chased by the breeze that licked the amber flames. We were loath to let our breath muffle the sound of his voice as it threaded through the legend, quick and sharp, as if it were a needle bringing the words together in that rich pattern.

"She is the fairy's midwife…and she comes in shape no bigger than an agate-stone on the fore-finger of an alderman…"

Ay, it was a tale of fairies, and it served to delay youths, some of us past seventeen, on our road to a night of merriment. It was Mercutio and his magical way with stories that kept us there, spellbound. Queen Mab herself could have been hovering in the shadows behind our torch fire all the while, cackling silently, and none of us would have cared.

In any case we had no need of her actual presence. Mercutio could conjure her from the night that we did not notice darkening, and all with his fiery speech. Every detail of 'her wagon-spokes made of long spinners' legs' and 'her whip of cricket's bone' were more real than our own selves when Mercutio told of them.

"And in this state she gallops night by night through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love." I told myself then that it was only a spark dancing free in front of his strangely illuminated face – that fleeting glint in his dark eyes – or else it was meant for the one whose new affection brought us this way tonight. Mercutio was extremely quick, but I would not allow myself to fear that my emotions were really plain enough upon my face as to betray me so soon.

"Oe'r ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream, which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues –"

"Think, Romeo, wouldst thou this Rosalind was thus afflicted by thy attentions?" called Luciano, the eldest of our number – and even our frantic shushing could not quite stifle the laughter that rippled round the group, or the blush creeping slowly up the face that I had allowed the fever to erase completely from my mind.

He talked of lawyers, courtiers, a greedy parson, all brought by the little fairy to dreams of the various successes they desired.

"Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck – " cried Mercutio, throwing back his head to bare his own pale throat – "and then dreams he of _cutting_ foreign throats, of breaches! ambuscadoes! Spanish blades! of healths _five-fathom_ deep; and then anon _drums_ " (that sharp syllable startled us all, and the torch-bearer nearly let go his lantern) "in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, and being thus frighted _swears_ a prayer or two, and sleeps again." He uttered the word 'swears' as if it were itself a foul curse, and I could not tell whether the gleam in his eye on 'prayer' was the glint of madness or of sorrow. It was common knowledge that Mercutio's father, who had himself been a soldier, was killed fighting on some strange shore when his eldest son was but a child.

From then on his voice took a darker tone, an angry tone that kept the words moving with a stabbing ferocity. The rhythm of the story changed, and Mab was no longer a mischievous entity to be laughed lightly along with. Mercutio's eyes flashed dangerously as he continued. The fairy queen was the bringer of misfortune now, a _hag_, a predator.

We stepped back almost involuntarily as our friend became more and more agitated, his gestures wilder, his words harsher. At the last desperate, "THIS is she! – ", the kin that I had then stepped forward, and laid his hand on Mercutio's flailing arm, and commanded, "Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!" Then, more softly, "Thou talks't of nothing."

The fire seemed to leave his eyes then, and an easy grin spread back across his face. "True, I talk of dreams." There was a slight note of mockery in that voice (a familiar one, but nothing meant by it); after all, it was at the other's anxiety over a dream that Mercutio had begun his story. The madness, though, was all his own.

…

I feared I could no longer trust my own thoughts, which for so long had been my refuge when the outside world became too much to bear – and where, then, was I to turn? But the answer to my previous inquiry brought present distraction. Lost in my recollection, I was startled by the voice.

"If thou art sure that thy fever is gone – then, I would say thou mayst meet him; he is, he says, called Giulio, although from the way his eyes darted from my face as he told me I doubt that it is the truth. Since his arrival here – he was delivered not hours ago, and in a great hurry by a distraught woman I took to have been his mother – he has been of a most melancholy disposition. Perchance thou canst cure him of that."

I sorely doubted it, in my current state, but agreed at once that I was well enough to see him. As the monk swept out of the sanatorium – if the small room in which I found myself could be awarded that title – I only wished fervently that this sad Giulio might be a youth that was not pale of skin nor dark of hair or of eyes. Another illusion would only greet me, if that was to be the case. And that would confirm that, just as I was afraid, some terrible malady of the mind had seized control of me at the moment of Mercutio's death.

Minutes later – I guesses at the time, although with little to put it from my mind I was plagued by the pain in my arm as if hours were passing – I heard feet pattering across the little courtyard, and a small shadow fell across the entrance to the sanatorium. The boy was very young for a novice; the cowl of his oversized habit obscured his face completely, and his sleeves came almost to the ground. The monks must have been forced to find him something immediately; I imagined the wailing woman pushing her terrified child through the doorway and running back down the path, not looking back although he cried after her, and a monk shutting the door and leading the poor child inside…

"Good even!" I called uncertainly, and the tiny hooded figure looked up. We both started in shock.

"Good even to thee, Benvolio," replied Valentine.


	12. Chapter Twelve Epilogue: I Know

**A/N: Apologies for the wait, the length, and the inferior quality. And anything unintentionally offensive.**

It is today a twelvemonth since Valentine and I first came to the monastery in Mantua; a full twelvemonth, now, since we both lost the one that most we loved. We speak of Mercutio often, and maybe the pain is less, or maybe our joy at his memory is greater.

The monk who persuaded the abbot to say that I might be allowed to stay on – who healed my arm in the weeks after my arrival (as I later found, his name is Brother Marco) asked us once what Mercutio meant to us, that he was so highly and so frequently praised. We shared a brief glance as Valentine answered, "A brother," and I, "A friend."

Valentine might have been young, but already he was as perceptive as his brother, and I know that one look was enough. I remember every word of the conversation that we had afterwards, when Brother Marco, satisfied with our answer, left earshot.

"A _friend?"_ I had never seen Valentine so angry. Not when Tybalt sneered at any friend of his brother, not when Mercutio was blamed for some fault of his cousin Paris, like a thing broken or a fight begun. (For Valentine was just as protective of Mercutio as the elder of the younger.) Nay, not _ever._ His eyes burned black as coal, and they did not seem to belong to him – to some miserable creature of winter, perhaps, but not to any boy. His skin abandoned what little pretence of colour it had mustered since the awful realisation of Mercutio's death, so that his dark hair fell like shadows across that stark white face.

Valentine's ire pierced almost as sharply as his brother's disgust had, and I turned away from the terrible accusatory glare. But he had more rage to vent. For quiet, accepting Valentine to consider me such a monster I felt as if my very soul must be Devil-tainted; and so I took his words for punishment, and heard him, though his manner was frighteningly reminiscent of Mercutio's terrible coldness as he pushed life and me away…

"What dost thou take me for – blind, and a fool with it, Benvolio? Friend? _Friend?_ Hast thou not the mettle to name that which leads thee to speak my brother's _name_ with such reverence?"

Then quite without warning he howled like the night animal I saw in his flashing eyes; the fight left him, and he began to weep.

Between sobs, softly he said, "Mercutio…Mercutio would want thee to remember thy love. For if thou denyst it, what is there left of thy memory of him but falsity and lies? Better to recognise what he was…a _friend, _ay," – he smiled through the hot tears now – "but never forget what else."

I saw how he crumpled – from the draining force of his fury, the exhaustion of weeping, the grief – and I reached out awkwardly. Without hesitation he folded against my proffered arm and sank into an untroubled slumber.

His innocence is even now a painful reminder of his age. I fear his lot has been far harder to bear than mine has – to lose both father and brother so cruelly, then to be left here unexplained, with the semblance of abandonment. (We do not know what happened to Valentine's distraught mother after she brought him to the monastery in her grief; Brother Matteo rushed after her, but he is an old man and was not able to keep up. Perchance she came safely back to Verona. Valentine and I speak little of the family he has not seen for such a time – besides his mother, whom I think it pains him to remember, he likes his uncle little and Paris even less.)

However mature Fate may have forced him to become, though, he is still far too young to take his solemn vows as yet – the abbot did consent to him staying on as a novice (under the name of Giulio) but I think with some reluctance.

…

Brother Leonardo rushes into the courtyard where I stand with Valentine and Brother Marco. The young monk's cowl is slipping down over his eyes in his hurry, so that he nearly trips on the flagstones, and the older man reaches out to steady him.

"Peace, Brother Leonardo. What gives thee such haste?" he smiles. And then, for Brother Leonardo's eyes are wide with terror, Brother Marco's expression settles with a gravity I have barely seen in that face, so much more often creased with laughter. A single deadly syllable, a terrible question, is forced out in a whisper so hoarse it gives his voice the impression of many more years than he has lived.

"Plague?"

Brother Leonardo can only nod, frantic.

A great sorrow comes into the eyes of Brother Marco, and his words have a vehemence that surprises me. "From whence dost this vile news –"

The younger man interrupts. One word.

"Verona," comes the strangled reply.

Valentine and I each regard the horror on the other's face. Valentine's still-boyish features are frozen in a terrible mask of shock; for all I know, my own countenance is blank – in my time at the monastery, helping Brother Marco tend to the injured and the sick, I have seen more death than I care to think on and I certainly cannot shed tears at every passing – but a great sorrow wells within me like a great river threatening to burst its crumbling banks after a surfeit of rain. Verona! O, sweet city, tainted city that all these days I have not seen!

And little wonder, ay, that Leonardo is in so much distress. He too was born and bred within Verona walls; he, however, has kept a little correspondence with some he knew there. I think that 'some' is mainly young Friar John; the two were boyhood companions, I remember.

Brother Marco takes a short letter from Leonardo's trembling hands. "Grave words indeed," he mutters, as his eyes scan the slip of parchment. "Friar Lawrence – I believe thou knew him well, Brother –" (this was to me, although Valentine too looked up in recognition of the name) "has been taken by the evils of the plague, and those remaining would have our help in tending the affected of Verona."

For a moment I believe my senses do deceive me – how can I have heard those words? That benevolent figure that throughout my life has been ever there to comfort and guide – Friar Lawrence, gone? Friar Lawrence, dead? That surely is impossible. But no, the sorrow in Brother Marco's eyes proclaims the awful truth of such a fact. And so the deathly plague has come to Verona, city of my birth.

Valentine stares at Brother Marco, as disbelieving as I. In the absence of a father, the kindly friar has oft fulfilled the role for Mercutio's brother. (Mercutio himself was wont to spurn all authority – his independence of spirit, that thing I envied so and which I think first drew me to him, would never allow his to obey an adult any more than befriend a Capulet.)

A silence, full of shock and sadness, descends upon the small courtyard where we unhappy four are here grouped. I break it with little thought for the words I speak.

"We must send help to our brothers in Verona, for the plague is a dreadful thing and they are surely overwhelmed. I will go. Brother Leonardo, wilt thou accompany me?"

The monk's drawn face breaks into a sudden smile – his joy at the suggestion of seeing his friend again, and his home city, clearly outweighs the grief that he feels for Friar Lawrence and the dire trouble in which he will find Verona.

"Aye, and gladly," he answers at once. Then his shoulders slump, and he resumes his previous air of melancholy. "Thinkest thou the abbot will allow us to make this venture?" His question is mannered so I can tell he believes only the contrary. "I'faith, 'tis not high likely that both of us shall return, should the vile plague truly be so rife in Verona city even as we speak."

His query, though directed at me, is not really for my answering. Brother Marco's face falls into a frown. "I doubt the abbot would be grateful to lose two of his number, so valued here – thou, Brother Leonardo, art a great scholar, and thou –" he nods to me – "art the best amongst the physicians we have had here. But I will go now to discuss the matter with him."

I watch the departing figure with little hope in my heart. The abbot is not a cruel man; it would not befit one of his position, for cruelty and holiness will sit uneasily in the selfsame soul. Yet Brother Marco has spoken true, I fear. For it may well be – terrible as it seems – that soon we will be needed here as in Verona; the plague, most vile of all evils (to one of medicine like myself) is likely yet to spread to Mantua. And then it is this city which will be overwhelmed. Verona then may be beyond all help save the hand of the divine, for without Friar Lawrence's capable guidance those who could assist are surely panicking.

So caught in my own desperate thoughts am I that at the first I do not hear Brother Leonardo's quiet words, and must ask him to speak again. He does so even more softly, glancing around as he speaks. Who is he frighted should overhear him?

"Our journey will not meet with the abbot's favour, I am certain. The man would protect his own and hold us to our vows of stability rather than give us leave to answer this desperate plea for help." A crooked shadow of a half-smile crosses his face. "So I will take my own leave of this place. I have often felt as if God is far from here, though by rights His spirit should walk these sacred grounds –" He breaks off suddenly, and begs, "Forgive me this blasphemy, friends."

Valentine and I assure him that his words are of no consequence. Although I have told no-one, I too feel detached from the Lord despite the fact that my sanctuary is His house. I urge, "Prithee continue. Thou dost mean to fly in secret?"

"Ay, and with haste. Shall I have company?"

If I leave the monastery in such a way – with the shameful stealth of a common criminal – I can never return. I know this. Perchance it is the exciting prospect of such an adventure that appeals to the childishness I thought to have shed at Mercutio's death. Perchance, the hope of relinquishing ties to this static existence, and my disappointment that joining the monastery has not been what I expected. Or maybe I am merely homesick.

Whatever the reason, I smile. "How are we to come by horses? If I am to be a runaway, I would not be a larcener too…"

…

The hired horse is a gentle beast, responding to my inexpert commands without complaint. That is a good thing, for the terrain is rough; Leonardo and I travel where fewer will see us and recognise our habits.

I am glad of the route we take. It was in fact my suggestion. (Leonardo, in his enthusiasm, thought nothing of our safety – he only desires to reach Verona, and his friend, with all speed.) I felt I could not bear to retrace the stumbling steps that brought me to the monastery at Mantua; I remember all too well the hellish visions that besieged me, in my delirium, as fever and grief lead me on my meandering way.

It would have been a heavy burden too, the weight of imagining how Valentine's mother must have dragged her child along the same road only hours behind, and thinking subsequently of Valentine. My last link to Mercutio, left behind in Mantua – abandoned, poor youth, for a second time.

There was naught else to be done. Despite the circumstances in which he was delivered into the monks' care, he has flourished in the past year, and I think that unlike Leonardo, unlike me, he has found his peace there. To bring him away on our ill-advised, unpermitted passage to a plague-place would have destroyed him. That is not to say that the parting of our ways was smooth; as if he were but small again, and not the youth he is now, he cried and clung and begged to be allowed along. It hurt my heart to sever the brother-like bond which has grown between us all this time.

My countenance must bear the gravity of my thoughts, for Leonardo reins in his mount – a docile bay – and draws him to a halt beside mine. "Thy heart is heavy. Speak."

I shake my head dismissively, claiming, "'Tis no matter; and trivialities must not stay our course. Come, Leonardo, let us be on our way."

As we ride off again Leonardo agrees with some ferocity that we should not delay. "It does not do to tarry and talk while Verona suffers, and John's brethren are burdened with her. We were called to act, not to converse."

And so we progress. The journey is wearing, the atmosphere between us fraught – both our minds, I think, are preoccupied with worry that our own families will have fallen victim. In the monastery I tried not to dwell on my memories of Verona; I thought I would never come home. (Indeed I did not even think it home any longer, not with Mercutio gone, and I tried to make God's home my own. But in truth I could never have been a monk.) Now, though, those I have not seen in so long fly unchecked through my head. Mother and Father. The other boys in the Montague band…

What has become of the feud in my absence, in the face of Tybalt's death and Romeo's flight? What has become of my cousin?

Unlikely though I knew the notion to be, I have a sudden surging of hope that Romeo and I will be reunited. That a grief-stricken uncle and prince will have recognised revenge, not murder, and pardoned my childhood companion; that Romeo will have been called home to make peace with the Capulets, and perchance to marry that love of his whose name he cried at the point of Mercutio's death. Giulia?

I struggle to remember, certain that _Giulia_ is close to the mark; and suddenly the image of 'Giulio' comes to me. Have we been discovered, and what the consequence for Valentine? I did not think of that when we left. How serious a crime can it be for a novice to know of our escape and not to tell? I know there have been beatings in the past for misdemeanors smaller.

Or has he told – Brother Marco, or even the abbot? Are we even now pursued?

Lost in the traps of my own imaginings, I am startled when Leonardo gives a sudden joyous call. "The gates!" I lift my head, and, wonder of all wonders, I am greeted by the sight of a stone archway, beckoning us into Verona.

We dismount. The mare snickers in my ear as I lead her slowly along the now-familiar road, savouring each step as if it was ambrosia to my soul. Leonardo is less restrained, and works his poor creature into a frenzied skittering so that it may keep pace as he runs along, whooping.

After all our careful avoidance of much-travelled routes, it seems we must be observed now as we pass into the city of our birth; but by some miracle, the streets are quiet.

The cobbles bear us in their meandering way into the great square. As I reach the mouth of an alley that spills its dank secrets for the light without to judge, my footsteps and my steed's resound in my ears like they would fain call up the earthquake twelve years dead; my heartbeat and the pulsing of my fatigued blood dance the ponderous steps of thunder, and I pause, remembering.

_The flash of steel, the fall of a friend, the grin of a villain as he scampers away with bloodied paws._

_Leaves. Plantation leaves, not to be found. And the crude and useless bandage I fashion with desperate hands._

_Useless and desperate. _

_His life bleeds through my fingers._

"'_Twas _thou_ that gave the cat occasion to claw me…"_

"_These are the words of a madman! Thou art delirious."_

"_Delirious for love."_

_Mercutio. Mercutio, I FORBID thee to die._

_The one time in his life that my friend refused to listen._

Without sound Leonardo has come to stand behind me, fastening his gaze on the open space ahead.

"I know," he says quietly. "I can no more believe I am home than I would credit the statement that I could fly with no wings." And then his grin is like the Spring sun discovering it can blaze unhindered after the age of darkness. "But this joy is so great…so great, I feel it must lend me the powers of flight! Come, friend, come!"

I watch him run on for a moment before I follow, my own gait as heavy as his is light. How many times, as a boy, have Romeo and I mocked our tutor Signor Salvatore for his shuffling pace? He would walk like a man twice his age, and in our youthfulness we would laugh. But now I fancy I recall something I once heard him mention to Father, something of a loss – was he perhaps widowed? un-fathered by the death of a child? – and I yearn to console him, to say to him: I know.

Such an expression does not befit Leonardo, poor fool. What could he know of my loss? He spoke merely of his own home-sickness, and imagined me overwhelmed by relief at our return. Shaking my head, I tug the horse's rein a little sharply – inciting it to a brisker trot – and quicken my pace in order to catch the hurrying Leonardo.

By the time I come level with him in his haste he has all but crossed the square. A little out of breath – for the ride and the run have stolen it; after a year at the monastery I am not used to such vigor – I draw what is left in my lungs so that I may beseech him slow himself, when I perceive that someone watches us.

A man – just out of boyhood, perhaps a few years senior to me – is leaning against the door of the old stable, arms folded and stare fixed steadily upon Leonardo and me. He appears ill-kempt, and his dress is the rough attire of a servant; and I assume he must be the stablehand. The shadows of the decrepit building hide his face but his posture clearly states hostility. Greatly mistrusting, I am nevertheless not quick enough to warn my companion away; still overflowing with his newfound elation (so different from the quiet young monk of Mantua!) he has already raised his voice in greeting. "Good den!" And he strides forward.

I cannot say why I should be so fearful; although he may be unwelcoming, this man – the first soul we have encountered yet, though we stand in what should be the busy heart of the city – has given us no threat, no cause for alarm, only cold and unfriendly looks. But instinctively I bring my cowl up to shade my own features, so that we will meet on even terms, since it seems Leonardo is intent on procuring shelter for our horses here.

Why here? Why, of all the stables we could visit, this dilapidated place? I gaze past the darkened figure into the interior gloom of the little shed. It is as empty as it was this day a twelvemonth past –

– and all at once I am watching that terrible scene repeat itself before me. I see myself crumpled on the muddy straw. Mercutio's lifeless form lies beside me. I lift my dagger, slick with his blood from my hands, and aim its point just above my heart –

Then the stranger in the shadows answers Leonardo, and the phantoms of my imagination dissolve before grief can truly grip me.

"Good den to thee also, sir." The words are curt, spoken with a curled lip, but not impolite. There is contempt in them but no menace; and yet my sense of foreboding only increases. "Shelter for thy beasts?"

Leonardo nods, handing over both the reins and a few coins. (Monks are forbidden earthly possessions, and I own none – but as he confessed to me, he never felt at peace in the monastery; and so he kept some simple things. A small sum of money. Letters from his friend the friar.)

The young man steps into the light as he takes the money, and I see the gleam in his eyes as the coins smile in his palm. The look is suddenly familiar; I recognise Lucio, Tybalt's friend and kinsman. Bad fortunes indeed must have befallen the family! I remember how proud a man Lucio's father was, and wonder that the relation of a Capulet would be forced so low.

I am anxious to be gone, lest I myself be recognised, but Leonardo has more to say. "Know'st thou wherefore the city is so still today?"

Lucio does not turn back to us as he leads the horses into a waiting stall. "I am surprised at thy ignorance, Brother – but perchance the news did not reach thee. Didst thou not hear that our gracious Prince –" (and his expression betrays that he thinks anything graciously of Escalus, if indeed the ruler of Verona is still that same) "has declared this date a time of mourning for the lives lost in the great feud?"

He falls silent – perhaps he is thinking of his friend, or perhaps he is merely waiting for us to leave – but my interest is piqued. "Thou speakest as though the city is at peace. Tell me, do the houses of Montague and Capulet regard each other in favour now?" What a wondrous thing that would be!

"Truly thy lack of knowledge amazes me," comes the irritated reply. "But I suppose there was no occasion for thee to hear the Prince declare that the feud was done, for the proclamation was not made in your far off god-house but in this very square."

The stable door swings shut, marking a clear end to the conversation. But as Leonardo and I share a smile at the happy piece of information, I hear Lucio mutter, "Made to idiots like that pair, and to old fools too ancient to fight. Any man with sense knows that the Montagues still owe us the price of a life, and I swear I will be the one to even that debt…"

Leonardo gives no sign of having heard Lucio's bitter words, for he smiles still as he leads the way to the cell of Friar John. "The fighting ended! Verona at peace with herself once more, and enemies dear friends again…"

He sounds wistful. I entreat him to continue, and he pours out the tale of how – many years ago – he was the companion of another boy (I do not know the name; Leonardo is older than I, and I might have been in infancy when the two were friends) throughout their years of schooling. Then the families intervened, tore the youths apart, turned them against each other. "I would we had more time and a happier reason for our visit, that I might visit him and see if we could not be friends again," Leonardo sighs.

I never knew Leonardo well at the monastery; it is only during this journey that I have talked much with him. I know little of his life, and this story has intrigued me; I ask him to speak more of himself and his upbringing. I hope he might mention a name I recognise, or some other such link to my own life – for what friendships have been built on utter difference, on absence of common circumstance, feeling or opinion? It seems we know Veronas quite disparate: Leonardo's on the eve of the feud's rebirth, and mine at the deadly height of it all.

That leads me to question him at what age he left the city to come to Mantua, "and wherefore?"

Not until I have spoken do I realise that perhaps, like me, he would prefer not to disturb the particular memory. For I fear I have indeed offended him – he droops, no longer so jubilant, and turns his face away as he responds. "I was sent by my mother at the age of thirteen." So only a little older than Valentine. "Sent away because I shamed my family. I…"

But I am not to hear his 'crime' revealed; his narrative is interrupted by the materialisation of the very one we are seeking – Friar John, very much more gaunt than I remember him, comes into view at the end of the street. He walks slowly, lost in thought and in his habit (I recall he was never a large man, but nor was he ever this thin). Leonardo and he set eyes on the other at precisely the same moment.

At once the quiet air is full of a joyous clamouring. "Sweet Leonardo! I feared thou wouldst not come –" the friar begins. The smile erasing every line from his haggard face is only matched by the one that Leonardo gives as he interjects –

"Not come, John, when called by _thee_? What dost thou take me for?"

And – having uttered the same words that Valentine used when I dared to slight the memory of our shared loss – Leonardo rushes to Friar John, and embraces him as if the Last Judgement is upon them, or as if they are the last two alive in the world – nay, the universe! – but have no concern of it, no care at all.

How happy they are. How greatly their spirits must lift to behold, and to hold, each other again, after so many years of miserable separation. And how my own heart leaps to see them content, for _I know._

I know. Well, I do not think Leonardo can have known of my love for Mercutio (I had my own thoughts of his professed friendship with Friar John, but unconfirmed they remained until this moment) but had he known, he would doubtless have understood. He would have recognised what my loss was – just as I, now, feel their delight as though it was mine own. Perhaps Mercutio lingers still in these home streets, watching, saying nothing for once but only smiling…

At length, the two men of God part (although the friar's hand is firmly clasped in Leonardo's still). They begin to walk away – but either Friar John catches sudden sight of me, or the other recalls my presence, for both stop in horror. Fingers hastily untangled, Leonardo turns to me, his countenance an awful mask of guilt. "Friend…" he calls out to me, sounding so hopeless I am afraid he is on the verge of weeping – then he shakes his head. By his side, the friar merely looks resigned, as if waiting for the storm to break over his head.

"So this is why thy mother sent thee to be a monk. The reason could be worse, could it not? At least thou wast not a killer, like I was."

Leonardo gasps, and his frame trembles violently. But the friar – the more frail of the two – steps forward. His face is grave, but I sense he is careful not to judge me as yet. "Thou know'st our secret – I would know thine." Before I can start, however, he speaks again. "Hast thou confessed of this?"

When I reply that no holy man has ever heard of my crime, he smiles gently. "Consider this your confession, then, my friend. Come; speak."

What choice have I, then, but to relate what happened? To tell Friar John – and the shocked Leonardo, who is clinging to the friar again – that it was I who was responsible for the deaths of both Mercutio, whom I loved, and Tybalt (for whom I had no such affection). I explain how my foolish actions decided the outcome of both fatal duels. "It would have been hard enough to lose him, but to have his blood on my hands is almost too much to bear…" And to my mortification I cannot but weep as I finish my sorry story.

Though his eyes remain serious – tending towards sadness – Friar John manages a pale replica of the smile that he first bestowed upon Leonardo. "Have some comfort in this, if thou can: thou art absolved of any sinful part thou took'st in the dark business, though truly I think the fault lies not with thee. Thou art not, to my mind, a murderer; but I know it is not enough for me to say, 'Blame not thyself' and it will be done…" He sighs. "I, too, wish his death had not come to pass, not so soon, and so fruitlessly."

I think upon the words I heard Lucio mutter minutes ago. "Then the feud is not ended?"

Leonardo, at this heavy suggestion, grips Friar John's arm in distress. And the friar, in answer to my query, shakes his head. "It was a broken Prince who issued the proclamation. Escalus in his grief is no longer the ruler we once knew. Both nephews gone – that was hard to him, and hath aged the Prince so that he seems now as old as the ancients among whom he creates these illusions of peace."

It is my turn to startle at the unfamiliar direction events have taken. "Paris too? How comes this?"

"By mistake; by misfortune and misunderstanding, by ill-tolerance and hate," the friar answers quickly; yet the look of his face is now definite sorrow. "Another unneedful death. And how can the feud end when the Capulets bay for blood? How can our fallen-spirited Prince silence the comrades of Tybalt Capulet, when they cry vengeance and would claim a debt of the Montagues? For the latter has lost but one, the former two, and the Capulets say three – they would own County Paris, since he wooed their Lady Juliet and was to have been her husband."

Juliet! _'O God in Heaven, Romeo, couldst thou have chosen worse?'_ I think, as immediately I recollect the name of his sought love that would elude me so when I thought on it earlier. Then another thing of the friar's speech sounds clearer in my brain. "Thou didst say the Montagues lost one. I know of no deaths beyond that of Tybalt, who I saw die. Prithee tell me, who was that one?"

At this the expression on Friar John's face is such an agony of anguish that, if he had been of Montague, the answer could only have been 'my mother' or some other dear relation of his. "Thou dost not know? Then I think…I think there is something that I needs must show thee."

He hurries away, his start so abrupt that Leonardo and I must run to keep pace. As he hastens along, he will not look back at us, but instead sets his face in perusal of the road cobbles as if they were a matter of great import and interest. With every following step my heart sinks with foreboding greater and greater. What unhappy thing can the friar have to reveal to me? Who can the Montagues have lost that it grieves the good man so much to tell me? My father is no fighting man, so surely not he…

Without my realising, Friar John has brought us to the house of Capulet. And how changed! The great high wall around the orchard has been torn down, laying bare the sorry space within – the grass is overgrown, the trees withered and barren. The grand house itself is grand no longer, but looks somehow tattered, as if it were tired of life. The evident fall of Capulet comes as a shock; though, I suppose, I should have guessed from Lucio's low state. Friar John explains how the feuding families have been stripped of their wealth and titles in punishment, how the Montagues are subdued but the Capulets only cry louder for payment of their debt.

As he speaks, he leads us into the courtyard, now open to the road. Here, too, the signs of Capulet's downfall make a sorry scene. The tiles are split; vicious weeds overrun the warped trellises; and yet two statues of burnished gold stand side by side in a corner of the little square. A man and a woman – or, at least, male and female. They have not the stature of full-grown adults, and the latter especially is more like a child. Simple rectangles of metal fixed to the base of each serve as plaques, upon which explanation of the figures is etched. "Victims of the feud," the friar says, softly. "Go, read them, and know at last."

The sense of foreboding shadowing my spirit reaches its oppressive peak as I, unwilling somehow to look directly at the statues themselves, kneel to make out the names. With the feeling of postponing the inevitable I read first the inscription at the feet of the female:

JULIET CAPULET

I am mildly surprised to find that I regret her death far more strongly than I regret her cousin's. Perhaps only for Romeo's sake – I know he has never lost a love in so terrible a way – but also perhaps because the Lady Juliet was but a child when last I knew of her, and as far as I have heard she was a mild thing. A pity, then, that another life was so wasted; but so it is.

And I cannot bear to draw my eyes away, for I know that then I will see the name of he who stands by her side; I know, too, that I do not _want _ to know who that might be.

"Know at last," the friar repeats, even more softly, as he steps carefully across the broken flagstones to join me. His hand gently guides my head so that I may read what is written of Juliet's youthful companion:

ROMEO MONTAGUE

O no, not him, any other but him! Not Romeo – mine own cousin, and dear friend Romeo!

"They died for love," the friar whispers, meaning to comfort me; but as I read his name over and over, set irrefutably before me in shining gold, all comfort flies its nest in my soul. Romeo! I stare up into his face – a cruelly excellent likeness, now I look upon it – and beg it to move. To speak. To give some flicker of life, any at all! "O, speak to me, cousin!" I cry, all my unspent tears falling. If only it were not in gold, I could hope to rust away his name with my weeping, and live convinced that it has never been true!

"Wilt thou leave me alone in this world?" For I am the only one left. I, Benvolio Montague, am all that remains of our close boyhood clan. I know that Romeo – his image, and not his self, butin my grief I think him Romeo – will make no response, yet I clasp his still hand and search those golden eyes for recognition, remembrance, life.

Friar John is telling the story of their death in a reverent voice, as if my cousin was the hero of such a fairytale Mercutio used to tell – dark and twisted and tragic things. I am sure the tale he tells is a brave one, and exceeding well-told (though the friar tells it not as masterfully as Mercutio would, I know!) but pretty romances, words of heroism and of death, will not reverse that of which they speak. Stories will not put the spark of life into this silent form.

Wherefore was it _I _chosen to remain? Wherefore must I watch my friends' lives extinguished, and not follow?

O, but follow I can! "The Capulets call for a death," I murmur, cutting across Friar John. "Am I not a Montague? Let me pay the price that our house owes." These words I speak to Romeo alone; but the friar answers them.

"Nay, think not so, my friend. What debt the Montagues may owe – and I think their tragedies are terrible enough – is paid by the death of thy aunt, out of grief for her son." This piece of ill news shocks me little. I was not close to my aunt; I am wicked to think it, I know, but I care not for her death in the face of Romeo's. "And Capulet is greedy; he will have the statues at his own sad house, and not let Montague look upon them at will."

And then he says to Leonardo, behind me, "Let us have done what we came to do."

I would fain resist, and stay weeping at Romeo's feet till some other power removed me, but as I am gently persuaded away I realise something in what Friar John has said. My love and my cousin are dead and can do no more; but I can still be the author of good deeds. So thinking, I allow the friar and Leonardo to lead me to our grim purpose.

…

The only way to measure the slow passage of time in this cursed place – to be sure that it moves at all, and does not stay fixed on one scene of suffering but presents another, and another, as it pleases – is by counting the number of lives that have been claimed here.

Within what – hours? days? – of the door being sealed up (for the Watch is fearful that the pestilence will spread) our patient died. There was very little we could do; the plague is as fleet as it is deadly, and she was already far gone when Friar John wrote to the monastery for our help.

She was Mercutio's mother, and sister to the I would have grieved for this. Grieved that Valentine is now on his own, for the removal of father, brother, cousin and now mother too renders him more alone than I. Grieved that Escalus has been so undone by his own grief that he let his kin die here in this dark house, without his sight and the care of his best physicians. But I think I can only be happy for her – she knows not any longer the suffering of the world, and may be with the husband and son she has lost. Why should we bid her stay?

The friar also. He was too fragile for this work; I think the passing of Father Lawrence had the same effect on him as Mercutio and Paris' on Prince Escalus, if to a lesser extreme. In any case his soul has flown, although Leonardo would call it down to earth again with weeping and wailing.

For this death I do feel sorrow – not for the friar, though he was young, but for Leonardo. I know too well what it is to hold the hand of a loved one while they ebb away. And now Leonardo understands truly the depth of my own grief – though I would he did not have to.

The house is empty but for us; silent, but for Leonardo's piteous cries. (What servants the lady had were sent away when she fell ill, I imagine.) And though it is rent with such sounds of sorrow, and should be heavy with the creeping stench of Death, the air…

…the air is sweet it seems. And my heart knows a sudden lightness.

Leonardo's howls fall away as a hand on my shoulder wills me turn. Turn I do – and Romeo laughs, that laugh I remember so well, at the expression of joy that I cannot and do not desire to keep from my face.

From behind him another steps out. "Mercutio!"

Everything I remember of _him_ is forty times greater in his actual being, save one thing – his usually merry grin is replaced by a smile of an altogether deeper nature. And, as well, when my eyes stray to the site of his wound I am overwhelmed with relief to see it unmarked.

Romeo grasps one of my hands, and Mercutio the other. And in a voice like the music of church bells – how glad I am to hear it, for I feared I never would again! – the latter asks, "Wilt thou come with us? Thy time to follow is now."

And I have no thought of resistance now, no wish to stubbornly remain. For Mercutio is right – and would I doubt his word in any case?

So, laughing, I merely answer, "I know, my friends. I know."

FINIS

**So there you have it. Any thoughts? Oh, and you don't have to flame me to tell me it's a terrible ending etc., because I know.**


End file.
